An anniversary event was held in Yokohama R&D Center to celebrate the rotary engine's 40th birthday on June 2 and 3, 2007. Shinichirou Uetsuki from Mazda's PR department was there to report.
The event was titled, "The Rotary Engine: Past, Present and Future". It took place at Mazda's R&D center in Yokohama, near Tokyo.
Even though the event was to cater for 250 people, Mazda's homepage was flooded with extra applications for tickets the day after it was announced! All the organizing was done in-house, so the R&D staff had a frenetic buildup. But at least that kind of work is fun!
Members of the Cosmo Sport Owners Club, who had just been to Hiroshima headquarters for the RE's birthday on May 30, came to the event. This time they were not guests, but volunteers who ran the activities and organized a Cosmo Sport (Mazda 110S) parade. Everyone at the event was fascinated by the glittering cars, which looked far younger than their 40 years.
Here are the guests gradually arriving. The event was jointly organized by all fans of Mazda, irrespective of model or engine type, which was demonstrated by the fact that the parking attendant on the day was a member of the MX-5 Owners Club.
Various RE-related exhibits lined the lobby. This is the first rotary engine supplied by NSU, the KKM400 model. Mazda's long and arduous quest to develop the engine began from this.
Also on display was an original rotor housing that suffered from "chatter marks", one of the main obstacles in development. The inside surface is jagged like a washing board. Although I'd seen photographs, this was the first time I'd ever actually witnessed the real thing.
Here are the three talk show panelists. In keeping with the "Rotary Engine: Past, Present and Future" theme, the panelists were (from the left): Past - Norio Kurio from Mazda's Technical Research Center. Present - Noboru Katabuchi, the RX-8 development program manager. Future - Akihiro Kashiwagi, the hydrogen RE development program manager. Mr. Kurio joined Mazda (then Toyo Kogyo) in 1964 and is one of the few engineers still working who have firsthand knowledge of the time before the 110S went on sale. Yours truly had the honor of acting as master of ceremonies.
Unexpectedly, one visitor presented Mazda with a hand-made rotor-shaped pizza to commemorate the rotary engine's fortieth year. It communicated the sentiments of all the RE fans. A big thank you to those involved.
The idea behind the talk show was for the panelists to reveal little known personal stories and unseen footage about the rotary engine. The panelists had so many stories to tell that the show could have gone on for at least another hour!
For the climax of the talk show, the engine of a hydrogen car was fired up. Since the exhaust pumps out nothing but water (vapor) the engine can run indoors without any noxious odors.
After the talk show, we split into three groups and rotated between break time and two focus groups. One group, The Rotary Engine Waigaya Meeting, was an opportunity for the visitors to question a panel on any and all aspects of the rotary engine.
The visitors voiced a lot of thoughts and questions and some were difficult to address. There is clearly a lot of public interest in the next rotary engine car. It was also interesting to hear the panelists opinions about the next generation rotary engine.
