Mazda CX-5
Owen gives us a history lesson
Younger readers might only think of Mazda as a seller of quite worthy but dull cars with, of course, the MX-5 being the exception, but old codgers like me get very misty-eyed around lightweight rotary coolness.
The frst thing I think of when I think of Mazda is rotary, and for good reason. Epic Le Mans success and memorable road cars have ingrained that sweet highrevving shrill in my brain. When I sleep I can sometimes still hear that ringing in my head as I stood by the bus stop chicane at the Daytona 24 Hours and the RX-8 racecars shifted down from the limiter shooting 8ft fames out the back. Proper.
I know my big CX-5 has a heavy diesel lump as opposed to a teeny Wankel engine but what it does have is very clever and carefully set up handling and ride that makes sense when you understand the history. Perhaps that’s why this car handles in a way that it probably shouldn’t for such a big car. Lightweight sports cars with tiny, revvy rotary engines that are fun to drive are what the Mazda brand made its name doing. Take the white 1969 Cosmo in the image above. It’s no bigger than a Lotus Elan and weighs 940kg with a twin-rotor 982cc engine. It handles like a dream, they say. Unfortunately, thanks to a sudden freakish snow storm, I wasn’t able to drive it.
Skip forward to the 1984 MkI RX-7 behind, and the capacity has increased to 1146cc but the car still weighs just over a tonne. This mint car has only done a few hundred miles from new after being discovered in a barn in Scotland.
Look at the cheeky face on the Cosmo, though, and there’s a similarity to the wide basking shark-esque mouth on our CX-5. That’s no accident, of course. Mazda’s design language is very strong all across the range. They call it the Kodo (soul of motion) philosophy which dates back to the 2010 Shinari concept (see left). It has
a uniquely Japanese look to it, they say. In non-marketing speak, it’s a properly handsome crossover and there’s not many you can say that about.
We may or may not get another era of rotary engines from those clever chaps from Hiroshima. They’re not committing to it yet, but what we are certainly getting is a new SkyActiv-X petrol engine that will have compression ignition like a diesel giving the best of both worlds. Any chance you can ft one into my CX-5, chaps?