Spinning in Circles: Mazda’s Rotary Ambitions Still Very Much Alive

It seems like we get a new update about Mazda’s plan for the rotary engine every few months. The automaker kept tinkering with the technology after the RX-8’s demise, but efficiency mandates left the high-revving Wankel on the sidelines, prohibiting the introduction of a true successor to the rotary coupe. Yet the motor hung around […]

Driving Mazda’s Next Mazda 3 with Its Skyactiv-X Compression-Ignition Gas Engine

– Mazda had a simple explanation for why we had flown to Germany to drive its made-in-Japan next-generation Mazda 3 hatchback in prototype guise: Such early prototypes are allowed to roam German roads, as they are not in Japan, at least not without passing rigorous inspections. Oh, and Mazda has a technical center in Germany […]

Why Mazda’s Skyactiv-X compression-ignition engine is a smart hedge bet

Mazda has cracked the code on a compression-ignition engine, called Skyactiv-X (which utilizes SCCI, or Spark Controlled Compression Ignition). That’s a neat engineering accomplishment, sure, but why is the tiny company investing big dollars in fancy tech that’s frustrated the much larger companies who’ve investigated it? In this case, Mazda is peering into a crystal […]