When Rotary Optimism Went Too Far: The Mazda Roadpacer

Does anyone remember the “Put a bird on it” sketch from the comedy series Portlandia? Pretty basic premise really: a couple arrives at a story to fix up the merchandise by sticking birds on everything, in a satirical take on overly folksy consumerism. Well, that was Mazda in the 1970s with the rotary engine. Pickup truck? Put a rotary in it. Compact sedan? Put a rotary in it. Hiroshima’s execs loved sticking rotaries in everything, and the kindest thing you can say is that the results sometimes varied (a rotary-powered 26 passenger bus weighing 6200 lbs? Oh dear). Eventually, we got the RX-7 out of this process, and those cars were great. But let’s talk about a rotary-powered Mazda that turned out to be more of a punchline.

First, consider the economic state of Japan in 1975. The country’s economic bubble of the mid-1980s tends to get more attention when discussing automotive topics, as it’s what gave rise to collectible cars like the Nissan Skyline GT-R or the twin-turbo Toyota Supra. But while Japan had the same sort of troubles as the rest of the world—inflation, the energy crises—it was a time of optimism. Nissan’s 240Z had started out the decade proving that the car industry was fully mature, and the Japanese electronics, camera, and other high-precision industries were booming.

So let’s say it’s 1975 and you are a mid-level manager of a factory that makes replacement flashbulbs for point-and-shoot film cameras. Your boss gets driven to work in a Toyota Century, but you haven’t quite hit the point where you can afford a chauffeur. You need four doors to accommodate the kids, but you also want something that impresses, shows that you’re getting ahead and earning those production bonuses. Nissan has its full-size President, but you don’t really want to pay for V-8 fuel economy, and besides, the styling’s a bit stodgy.

But then you remember reading a few years back about Mazda’s amazing rotary engine, and how a rotary-powered Savanna was the only machine that could stop the mighty Nissan Skyline GT-R’s winning streak in GT racing. Mazda stopped the Hakosukas at forty-nine wins in a row, proving that spinny triangle engines had the goods, at least on the track. Has that translated to anything in the showroom that might suit your needs? Unfortunately for your sake, yes it has.

Launched in 1975 as the first full-sized car to pass Japan’s restrictive new emissions tests, the Roadpacer had it all: luxury, space, and 1970s style. That’s style in the sense of the lapel sizes at the time, where the fashion was better equals wider. At over six feet wide, the Roadpacer was far wider than the Luce, the second largest car in Mazda showrooms, and so large that you had to pay an added width tax because it was outside regulations.

Some of Japan’s side streets are incredibly narrow, and you’d be hard pressed to get this aircraft carrier down them without knocking over a shrine or two, or possibly collecting several bemused Honda Supercub owners on the hood. Better to stick to the elevated highways, and use the Roadpacer in its natural habitat, piling on the miles in comfort. Hang on, you’ve almost run out of fuel again. I thought you were trying to avoid V-8-style fuel economy?

Here’s the first problem with the Roadpacer (there are several): it wasn’t really a Mazda underneath. Instead, it was an Holden HJ Premier sedan, sent from Australia to Hiroshima as a complete knock-down kit without engine. Down Under, Holden fitted the Premier with a 3.3-liter inline-six as the basic engine, with an optional V-8 made feasible by all the room under the hood. By comparison, the compact two-rotor 13B engine Mazda plonked in instead looked like a lawn tractor parked in an empty barn.

Basically, we’re talking wombat sushi, and that is not a great taste people are clamoring for. The chief advantages of a rotary engine are in its small, power-dense size and ability to operate relatively efficiently in specific rev ranges. It works great for racing, but in a road-car application you want a lightweight chassis that flatters those attributes. Even with an engine compartment mostly filled with air, the Roadpacer weighed 3500 lbs.

As an aside, one of the curious footnotes the Roadpacer earns is that it is the only production General Motors car to have a rotary engine. GM historians, and particularly Corvette fans, will know about the General Motors Rotary Combustion Engine (GMRCE) plans of the early 1970s, and the intent to build a rotary-powered Chevy Vega. That car never made production, but it did prompt one of the coolest oddball concept cars: the Four-Rotor Corvette. This had two mid-mounted twin-rotor engines and actually functioned—it’s said to have been tested to just under 150 mph. A Corvette that sounded like a Le Mans 787B would have been very interesting indeed, but as a testbed it didn’t work at anything less than full throttle. It was extremely pretty though.

GM’s decision not to pursue the rotary route looks, in retrospect, like a smart move. For Mazda, the story is less cut and dried. Developing rotary engine technology was key to the company not getting swallowed up by Nissan or Toyota during the industry consolidation that went on in Japan in the 1960s. It’s why Mazda is still trying to make the Wankel work today—it’s part of the brand’s identity.

Thus, while the Roadpacer may look like mismanagement, it’s really more a case of over-optimistic hoping. Let’s start with the price, which was just shy of four million Yen, or the equivalent of over $75,000 today. This is less than a contemporary Century would have cost, but is more than twice what Holden was charging for its cars in Australia, and also double the price of Mazda’s other sedans.

The Roadpacer’s onboard technology similarly pushed the envelope, with unheard-of luxuries for a Mazda. Central locking seems no big deal these days, but was pretty swish for 1975, and the Roadpacer also got rear-seat stereo controls and even an onboard dictaphone for putting together memos on the move.

The 13B rotary produced a not-bad 130 hp but a not-great 102 lb-ft of torque. You don’t need torque when you’re maintaining momentum flinging an RX-7 through a corner at Fuji raceway, but you do need it to get a luxo-barge up to highway speeds after stopping at one of Japan’s many toll booths. Paired with a three-speed automatic, the Roadpacer would take about fifteen seconds to get to 60 mph, yet still only return nine mpg.

Sales-wise, it was a bit of a disaster, moving only 800 cars over two years of production. Reportedly, many Roadpacers ended up getting sold into government fleet use, and didn’t survive into the secondary market. They are pretty rare today, but don’t command huge prices at auction. Buyers are perhaps looking for the novelty, or a Holden collector might be looking to complete the set.

By the time the Roadpacer went on sale, Mazda had already formed a partnership with Ford. Sales of rotary-powered cars in the U.S. had been affected by rising fuel costs, and Mazda’s alliance with Ford was out of necessity. There was another bout of over-optimism in the early 1990s with the attempt at creating the Amati luxury sub-brand, but that never came to fruition either.

Objectively, the Roadpacer was a terrible car: too expensive, too thirsty, too slow. In retrospect, it was a mistake, but it does show Mazda was and is willing to take chances to keep the rotary engine alive. It is, after all, the only company to still do so, even if the only production rotary at present is the range-extender in the MX-30 EV.

Given this dedication, you just know, as Mazda’s gorgeous recent Iconic SP concept was first shown in drawings to Mazda’s executives, well ahead of the real-life model being shown to great success in Tokyo, only one piece of advice was given to the designer. It’s perfect, we love it. Just one thing: put a rotary in it.