Celebrating the Mazda Rotary with a classic rally

Given it was invented by a German the Bavarian location for a classic rally celebrating Mazda’s association with rotary engines isn’t perhaps as odd as it might sound. Germany was also where Mazda chose to demonstrate its belief in the Wankel engine’s capabilities by entering two of its rotary-engined Cosmos into an epic 84-hour endurance race at the Nurburgring in 1968. And today this unlikely German-Japanese association is celebrated in a privately-run museum in Augsburg, home to the biggest collection of Mazdas outside of Japan and also the venue for a road rally attracting owners from all over Europe.

Our car for the event is the incredible 1967 Cosmo Sport, the model that launched Mazda’s love affair with the rotary and proved the new design could compete with more conventional reciprocating engines on road and track. A fleet of prototypes racked up hundreds of thousands of test kilometres in the years ahead of the 1967 launch of the production version, Mazda by then confident it had a car capable of bringing rotaries to the world.

Its American-influenced styling is clear enough, this and the name reflecting a hoped-for association with the space race going on at the time. In size the Cosmo is more European though, its dinky proportions reflecting the fact its two-rotor engine displaced less than a litre and had just 110ps/108bhp. By the time the second series car you see here had launched the wheelbase had been stretched and the power output had increased to 128ps/126bhp.

Given fewer than 1,200 were ever built driving one today is both an absolute privilege and an insight into some of the challenges Mazda faced throughout its association with the rotary engine. Disadvantages include an appetite for burning oil that occasionally makes it sound and smell like a smoky old two-stroke and a lack of torque compared with equivalent piston engines. This and the inherent thirst eventually did for the rotary as emissions regulations made it harder to offer a competitive alternative to conventional engines.

But there are clear plus points too. The Cosmo’s rotary revs with a willingness no 50-year-old piston engine could hope to match and its rasping engine note provides a unique soundtrack. It’s not particularly fast but it handles beautifully, meaning you can carry speed through the corners with utter confidence and delight in the fact you’re driving a car that stands apart from anything else on the road, both now and back in its day. The lineage from this to more modern rotary Mazdas like the RX-7 and RX-8 is clear, likewise, the inspiration for Mazda to develop this engine into something capable of winning Le Mans, as it did with the 787B in 1991.

After nearly two million sales across all manner of rotary vehicles – sportscars, saloons, buses and pick-ups included – nobody else has managed to make the engine work convincingly and the brand remains proud of its achievement. Appreciating that from the wheel of the Cosmo is a rare treat.