GO
GoAutoLogo
MENU

Make / Model Search

Future models - Mazda - RX-7

Paris show: Mazda RX-7 dream still alive

Gone but not forgotten: Mazda’s last rotary engined sportscar, the RX-8, is now discontinued.

Rotary-powered two-seat RX-7 sportscar still an active dream for Mazda diehards

1 Oct 2012

By DAVID HASSALL in PARIS

MAZDA executives continue to hold onto dreams of making a new-generation RX-7 sportscar – complete with a rotary engine – and are prepared to pounce when the Japanese company again becomes profitable.

A number of Mazda traditionalists see the RX-7 and the rotary engine as icons of the brand that must one day return and appear to be maintaining the dream.

Mazda design chief Ikuo Maeda – whose father Matasaburo Maeda designed the very first RX-7 that shook the world when it appeared in 1978 – leads the true believers.

Maeda-san, whose nickname is ‘Speedy’, told GoAuto at the Paris motor show this week that, having succeeded his father as design chief, still aims to follow him as an RX-7 designer.

“It is still my dream,” he told us.

“When we make the money, I will be able to spend the money,” he said in reference to Mazda’s recent post-Ford financial troubles.

22 center imageLeft: Mazda design chief Ikuo Maeda.

The 52 year-old designed the last rotary-engined ‘sportscar’, the RX-8 that was recently discontinued, a victim of increasingly tough global emission and fuel economy requirements, but sees the future RX-7 as a real two-seat sportscar, possibly with a mid-mounted engine.

He has an important ally in engineering ace Ichiro Hirose, the recently appointed general manager of Mazda Europe’s R&D centre and responsible for the brand’s SkyActiv technologies.

Mr Hirose, who is also a Mazda Europe vice-president, told GoAuto in Paris that Mazda was still working on a Sky Rotary but, like Mr Maeda, made it clear that nothing could be done until the company was in better financial health.

“There is a dream,” Mr Hirose told us when asked about the potential to apply SkyActiv technology to the rotary engine.

“If this kind of SkyActiv technology is well-received then we have a chance to restart such a development.

“At this moment we are not in a position to restart again, but if in future we earn more money then I believe there is a chance.”

In the meantime, Mr Maeda – the father of Mazda’s current highly acclaimed ‘Kodo’ design language – continues to do RX-7 design sketches in the hope they will one day turn into a production reality.

Read more

Click to share

Click below to follow us on
Facebook  Twitter  Instagram
Catch up on all of the latest industry news with this week's edition of GoAutoNews
Click here