Mazda’s Grand Tourer That Sounded Like A Le Mans Race Car

Why would an automaker sink millions—or even billions—into a racing program? The old saying is “win races on Sunday, sell cars on Monday.” But few buyers want to cram themselves into a true race car for their daily commute. That’s why automakers drop engines made famous by racing wins into luxurious grand tourers. And they’ve been doing it for a century.

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I’m referring to the Bugattis of the 1920s, the Ferraris of the 1950s, and Detroit’s NASCAR homologation muscle cars of the 1960s and T/A cars of the 1970s. But it might be a luxury car by Mazda that perfected this formula. The automaker built on one of the most famous and unique engines in auto sports history for one of the most advanced grand tourers of all time.

The Rise Of Mazda’s Rotary Race Program

Mazda introduced its first production Wankel engine in 1967, so by the late 1980s it was getting the hang of the rotary thing. It asked a seemingly innocent question: What if we took a rotary engine racing? The result was legendary.

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First, Mazda expanded the 13B it had been assembling since 1973 from two rotors to three. This made the “13G” a beast. To feed all three rotors, Mazda had to punch a “peripheral” intake port into the wall of the rotor housing. The resulting engine idled horribly, but had better airflow and massive power at high rpm. The automaker also developed telescoping intake trumpets which actually shortened as engine speed increased. Finally, it had to add a third spark plug per rotor to combust all the fuel-air mixture at high rpm.

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Mazda dropped the engine into its 757 prototype to iron out any wrinkles. Then in 1988, it dialed this thing up with four rotors for the “13J.” The powerplant proved troublesome at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1990. Mazda continued to improve and evolve the engine until the 787B race car arrived at the 1991 24 Hours of Le Mans with Mazda’s final four-rotor masterpiece in its chassis. The R26B engine had four rotors, each with a 654 cc combustion chamber, for 2,616 cc total. It made a cool 700 horsepower at 9,000 rpm. The 787B was the first race car to win Le Mans with something other than a traditional, reciprocating internal combustion engine. It was a watershed moment for Mazda, proving an engine configuration most casual viewers didn’t know existed could win the most grueling endurance race around. Even TV viewers who’d never heard the word “Wankel” could hear that the scream of the R26B was unlike anything else on the planet.

Enter The Eunos Cosmo: The Only Triple-Rotor Road Car

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The “Cosmo” had long been Mazda’s nameplate for its halo grand tourer. In 1967, it debuted as one of the first motor vehicles to feature a two-rotor engine. Starting in 1981, it was folded into the company’s JDM luxury brand: Eunos. Starting in 1990, the Eunos Cosmo offered a three-rotor engine.

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The huge 1962 cc triple-rotor engine is still the largest Wankel Mazda has ever installed in a road car. It sounded like nothing else in Japan. The closest thing patriotic Japanese drivers had ever heard was the 787B that the entire country had watched win at Le Mans.

In truth, the 20B-RE had more in common with Mazda’s trustworthy two-rotor 13B, which had powered the RX-7 since 1973. It didn’t feature the peripheral intake ports, telescoping intake trumpets, or triple spark plug combustion chambers from the Le Mans-winning engine. But it did have goodies the Le Mans car never got.

The 1990-1995 Eunos Cosmo’s triple-rotor 20B-RE and two-rotor 13B-RE both featured twin turbochargers built by Hitachi. These were the first twin sequential turbochargers available on any Japanese-built car.

JDM Exclusivity And The Tech That Beat Detroit

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Mazda pulled out all the stops for the fourth generation of the Cosmo. Another automotive first was the 2+2 coupe’s infotainment system. The top trim Cosmo featured a cathode ray tube touchscreen which featured the first satellite navigation system and the first touchscreen in the Japanese market.

The Cosmo kept it simple with two purpose-built trims. The top trim was “Type-E,” which stood for elegant. It had softer suspension, full leather upholstery, and the aforementioned car control system. The “Type-S” stood for—you guessed it—sport. It had firm, sporty suspension, which included control arms up front and a multilink in the rear.

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Three-pedal enthusiasts may be disappointed to hear that even the Type-S only came with an electronically controlled 4-speed automatic. It did have a gear selection mode allowing the driver to control shift points.

The Rotary’s Quiet Disappearance

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Mazda’s high profile racing win likely drove Cosmo sales. The automaker sold 8,875 of the cars, all in the Japanese market. Sixty percent were two-rotor variants, while just 40% had the three-rotor engine. Mazda stopped building its halo car in September 1995. The automaker hasn’t offered a three-rotor car since.

The closest the Cosmo ever came to resurrection was a “Cosmo 21” concept. Presented at the 2002 Tokyo Auto Salon, the Cosmo 21 was a retro-styled body on a Mazda MX-5 chassis with a rotary engine out of the RX-8.

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The successor to the two-rotor (13B-RE) engine available in the Cosmo was the turbocharged two-rotor engine that powered the 1992-2002 RX-7. For duty in the RX-7, Mazda dialed it up from 230 horsepower to 255 @6,500 rpm. With its sequential twin Hitachi turbos, the FD RX-7 was, in many ways, the final evolution of the Cosmo. Best of all, it was available in the U.S. But it didn’t quite have the three-turbo sound that gave the final Cosmo its Le Mans-inspired cool factor. Mazda finally pulled the plug on 35 years of rotary engines in 2002. But many enthusiasts still consider the powerplant’s road-going high point to be the triple-rotor Cosmo.

Hunting The Ghost: Import Market And Legacy

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All model years of the Cosmo are now eligible for the USA’s 25-year-old car import exemption. Three fourth-gen cars have sold on the Bring a Trailer website. A twin-rotor car sold for $10,500. Two triple-rotor cars sold for $13,752 and $25,250.

The Classic.com website has only recorded one sale in the past 12 months: $32,203. It shows seven other cars that are listed or have been up for auction—without selling—recently. Asking prices range from $15,000 to $29,777, depending on condition and configuration.

Sources: Mazda, Duncan Imports, Classic.com, Bring a Trailer