Patents Suggest Mazda Really Is Developing A New Rotary Engine

The RX-Vision concept that Mazda teased us with but never builtPhoto: Mazda

For years, we’ve heard rumors that Mazda was going to bring back the rotary engine and give us a new sports car as a successor to the RX-7 and RX-8. And yet, arguably unsurprisingly, it hasn’t happened. Well, technically, Mazda did bring back the rotary engine, but it serves as a range extender on the MX-30, which is definitely not a sports car. But maybe, just maybe, that’s about to change.

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CarBuzz found that Mazda filed six patents with the Japanese Patent Office, all of which are related to a new two-rotor rotary engine. Unlike the single-rotor engine used in the MX-30, this two-rotor design appears to be designed to power a car instead of serving as a range extender.

What car? We can’t say for sure, but it’s definitely the RX-9 (or whatever Mazda decides to call its follow-up to the RX-8), right? It has to be. Why else would Mazda develop a new rotary engine? Just to tease us with the potential to finally get what we really want, only to never put it into production? Actually, that might be what ends up happening. We’ve been burned before, and we don’t want to get our hopes up until there’s an actual car in front of us that we can drive.

If the RX-9 actually does make it to production, it’ll need to be a lot more fuel efficient than the RX-8’s 16 mpg city and 22 mpg highway rating. (Technically, the automatic got slightly better gas mileage, but we don’t like to acknowledge that it came with anything but a manual.) And that’s exactly what three of the patents focus on: changes to the rotor design that can improve fuel efficiency. So maybe there really is some potential here.

CarBuzz has a great, in-depth breakdown of each of the patents, so if you’re interested in learning more, definitely check out the original article. And maybe, just maybe let yourself feel the tiniest bit of hope that we’ll get one more rotary-powered sports car from Mazda before everything goes electric.