Mazda Cosmo: that other classic Japanese sports car

Posted on 06-08-2015 at 22:56 by Dizono – 47 Comments”

“Think of a classic Japanese sports car.’ Than many a car enthusiast right Toyota 2000GT call. Enjoy incidentally, but that this beautiful Mazda Cosmo with a rotary engine – this ondersneeuwt, is not.

Although NSU the brand is that the wankel engine created and on the card put, it is the Mazda that eventually the longest time gone by with the development of this type of engine. The RX-7 and RX-8 we all know, already assembled Mazda its reciprocating or rotary internal also in several other cars. The first was the Cosmo of 1967, which is incidentally also the first car with a tweeschijfs wankel engine.

The first prototype showed Mazda in 1964, just months after NSU with her Spider, the first production car with wankel engine to the world proposed. Was the NSU a relatively small car, the Cosmo was a lot bigger. In the first instance gave the wankel engine a healthy 110 hp, later on there was an upgrade that was good for 130 hp.

In large numbers, the Cosmo never built. Between 1967 and 1972, there were 1519 copies were built, a maximum of one per day. An extensive racing CV, the Cosmo never built. There was only one race part, but not the least: the 84 hour Marathon de la Route. Two Cosmo’s appeared at the start, one managed to finish the race. The other had -how frustrating – after 82 hours to specify, with a broken drive shaft. With the reliability of the Japanese rotary engine was so good.

Gallery: Mazda Cosmo 1967

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Follow-up

In the years ’70 and ’80 of the following two Cosmo’s, but these were existing Mazda’s that were equipped with a wankel engine. In 1990, presents Mazda, the Eunos Cosmo, a worthy successor to the original Cosmo. It is not only the first car to be standard with built-in GPS navigation is provided, it is also Mazda’s only car with a drieschijfs wankel engine. An ingenious piece of engineering, good for 300 hp and a theoretical top speed of 255 km/h. Theoretically, because the car limit was at 180 km/h. The Eunos Cosmo holds another record: in the past 25 years, Mazda will never have a more expensive car built.

Gallery: Mazda Eunos Cosmo

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