Mazda Just Revived an Engine Everyone Thought Was Dead

In 2012, the last rotary engine on earth went out of production, and the industry closed the file. Emissions rules had beaten it. Fuel economy had beaten it. Every rival that ever tried the design had abandoned it decades before. For thirteen years Mazda said nothing, and enthusiasts stopped asking. Then, in 2023, with no press campaign and no sports car attached to it, a rotary quietly went back down a production line in Hiroshima, Japan. It is smaller than a motorcycle engine. It sits in an electric car. And what Mazda built it to do is not what anyone had spent thirteen years waiting for.