An Rx8 (or other rotary variant) does not have a monopoly on having a high redline. Earlier Honda S2000's revved to 9000, Audi's Rs4 was (is?) 8250. Just to name a few...

 

because the majority of the driving population is neither smart enough nor cares enough to properly take care of that type of engine.

 

Oh yeah I am too lazy to read the old posts but corvette made a prototype 3 rotor version in the 70's but becuase of the fuel shortage or whatever happend back then they never released the car. I always wondered if it would've ruined chevy or made the corvette sell more personally I thought it looked decent for the time but who knows.

 

It was not cut due to a fuel shortage, it was due to the invention of the Cat converter.

See the rotary engine at that time ran radically cleaner than the typically American inline and V6 and V8. In fact the rotary engine runs so clean that it didn't even need a cat converter until the early 80's. Even today, Mazda richens the mixture for the cat converter to get a LEV rating.

The problem was emissions. With the mandatory emissions reductions in the early 70's, the only way it looked like GM was going to sell a car was to sell rotary powered cars because they couldn't reduce the emissions enough on the piston powered product to meet the upcoming standards/requirements. The Vega was designed and slated for a Rotary engine (as an example) and piston engines never quite fit (in fact with the V6 versions it was easier to pull the engines to get to the spark plugs).

But the cat converter changed that. And with it's development GM (and most other manufactures) were able to run a piston engine with a cat converter as clean as a rotary engine. GM saved billions by using the cat converter and not having to re-tool most of the engine production lines (as well as they could keep using the same antiquated push rod engine technology that they had been for the last 30 years (and continue in some engines to this day).

 

I firmly believe that if mazda tuned the motor down to around 150hp it would produce much better gas mileage. My 83 RX-7 got 27mpg with the original carb setup and my dad has a 1990 GTUs that gets 28mpg both na and lower power. I think our mpg is because they were trying to maximize the engine output rather then maximize the mpg the engine can get.

 

and all the emissions **** in our cars probably dont help! Global warming my ***

 

wait, we're supposed to keep that **** on the car. oops. haha Well the 8 still has it for now but I have connections and the 7 for many years ran straight pipes till I got banned from a town. Can you believe it, the judge said the car shouldn't be on the road cuz it's a race car (no I wasn't going fast, 20 in a 25 in 3rd gear tho it was like 1:30am cuz me and a friend had just left a bar). So now I run a muffler.

 

hmm....I thought the rotary had a hard time meeting US emmision standards

 

That would be wrong. Maximum efficiency generally means maximum gas mileage.

For example a proper cobb tune on the RX-7 not only gets you some minor HP increases but also nets you minor fuel economy increases and emissions decreases (which becomes an issue because running too lean tends to burn the cat up prematurely).

And I would doubt that a 1990 GTUs would get 28 MPG unless he drives at 55-60 MPH all the time with a nice tail wind and no hills and stops, or he has a broken tooth or two on the speedo gear in the tranny. 28 MPG is unobtainable on that car in normal driving conditions. Even EPA rating on that car was only 24 MPG highway. If he even got 25 MPG on a somewhat regular basis, I would be very very surprised.

No, not unless someone ***** with them.

 

what about the RX3-8

 

RX-38?!

An 8 rotor engine, able to produce 1,500 horsepower with twin turbo chargers, and getting .1 MPG!

Sounds like my kind of car!

 

What I was trying to say was, "why would any Mazda car, other than an RX8, need such a high redline?"

In other words, why would a CX9, CX7, Tribute, or Mazda 5 need such a redline?
They wouldn't, it would be a waste.

I guess maybe it could go in a 3, a 6, or a Miata but it would increase the base price of those cars, and then it probably would not be feasible to give the buyer the option to the bigger & faster engines in those cars. (ie: upgrade the Mazda 3 to the Mazdaspeed3)

 

Reliability sure, but efficiency, I don't think so. The rotary just has inherit disadvantages in terms of fuel burn.

 

What is inherent about it that causes poor mileage?
Your statement completely dismisses the possibility that some extra R&D could provide benefit.

I suppose someone back in 1976 looked around and said "Ehhhh....these piston engines are as good as they get........we will never see better than 20 mpg"

 

You forgot to mention, that alot of people dont want a car with only 232hp