Just because Mazda will end production of its RX-8 sports car, don't think that its rotary engine is gone forever. An unnamed senior company engineer at Mazda tells Paul Eisenstein at the TheDetroitBureau.com that the rotary engine could return later in the decade.
That would surprise us, since one of the historic knocks on the rotary, or Wankel, engine was that it is a gas guzzler. These days, fuel considerations trump all others. The rotary engine, which uses spinning wheels instead of pistons pushing up and down, was introduced in the U.S. in the 1960s. It's been in the RX for much of the last decade, like that 2004 model in the photo.