WHILE OTHER AUTOMAKERS have tried - and ultimately failed - to popularise the rotary engine, Mazda has been the only one to produce a range of workable road vehicles (and the occasional race car) motivated by the unique Wankel powerplant.

But with poor torque production and terrible fuel economy being the main bugbears of the rotary [...]

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After our going to lengths to dispute the likelihood of any RX-7 coming to us any time in the next decade, Inside Line reckons it’s had an inside source at Mazda’s Hiroshima HQ confirm that a new Mazda RX-7 is indeed on the way, though no dates were given.

According to IL’s source, Mazda’s efforts to [...]

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The team over at AutoCar have gotten wind that Mazda is busily working away on a plug-in hybrid vehicle to rival Chevrolet’s coming Volt - powering the wheels via an electric motor, the battery pack for which can be charged by a standard petrol engine (a very small one) on the fly.

The word is that testing of [...]

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RON? Not your next-door neighbour.

What does the RON number mean in regard to petrol?
Unleaded fuels carry a RON (Research Octane Number) rating. Put simply, RON determines petrol’s ‘anti-knock’ quality or resistance to pre-ignition; or if you want to put in another way, the Octane Number denotes its resistance to detonation.
If you run your [...]

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We’ve seen the JDM style of car customization grow from unknown to played out to solidly ingrained in automotive culture. We’ve also seen bizarre reversals of the trend in which Japanese owners buy a Japanese car only to trick it out USDM style (more on this in a later post). Now, to really twist your [...]

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Mazda has announced the pricing and specifications for their updated RX-8 range – the car that Mazda like to refer to as, “the world’s most successful rotary-powered sports car”.

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Mazda Motor Corporation has announced that its sights are set on reducing the fuel consumption of Mazda vehicles sold globally by an average of 30 percent by 2015. Mazda intend to achieve this goal through the renewal of (almost) its entire powertrain lineup by 2015 and via the upgrading of its platforms from 2011 - [...]

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As we’ve covered in the past, news of the mythical RX-9 has always been thin on the ground. Enthusiast renderings on the other hand have always flown thick and fast. And why not? With the GT-R now gracing roads around the world and both the STI and Evolution X long gone from the [...]

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The new Mazda2 is proving to be a sales success for Mazda and why wouldn’t it. Sporting attractive and distinctive styling, a five-star Euro-NCAP safety rating and a plethora of Car of the Year awards across the globe it would be hard to go past if you were in the market for this type of [...]

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Unbelievably, it has been 40 years since Mazda introduced their first rotary engined vehicle. Launched in 1967, the Mazda Cosmo Sport (110S overseas) was the first to feature the high revving and highly strung little Wankel. The original rotaries made great power but had a prodigious thirst for oil and petrol. Mazda however, stayed the [...]

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Ahead of its Tokyo Auto Salon debut, Mazda have released an image of their facelifted RX-8 RS, an uprated JDM model. While the RS is a JDM only proposition, its styling will be shared by the facelifted RX-8 due to be unveiled in Detroit next week, so essentially this is our first look at the [...]

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It’s not the 1st of April but I’d still be taking this one with a grain of salt, for the time being at least. These images have appeared on the JustPut.com forum with the claim that they are quite possibly a Mazda RX-9 Concept, due for production in 2012. Not being a big fan of [...]

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