To commemorate the 40th birthday of Mazda's rotary engine, the Mazda Museum at the company's headquarters is holding a special exhibition entitled, "40th Anniversary: Rotary Engine".

The museum's permanent exhibition includes a rotary engine related display. A 40 year old Mazda 110S and the Senku, a futuristic rotary concept car greet visitors at the entrance.

Also on display is part of an actual engine that suffered from "chatter marks". These scratches proved to be the biggest obstacle to successful commercialization of the rotary engine.

Past generations of cars powered by rotary engines are also in the exhibition.

You can even see the elusive Roadpacer, of which only 800 were ever made. I wonder how many are still around today.

This corner of the display shows rotary engines of years gone by.

Even in the early days of development, Mazda were looking at rotary engines with four rotors! This one says, "Made in 1963". That was four years before the first Mazda 110S went on sale!

Here is another four-rotor engine, the famous 1991 R26B rotary engine. It powered the first Japanese car to ever win the Le Mans 24-hour race - the Mazda 787B. After the race, the engine was taken back to Japan and dismantled. Mazda's engineers discovered it had suffered hardly any damage and could have kept on running. Here was actual proof of the superb reliability of the rotary engine.

Here is the actual race car, number 55, which took the chequered flag at Le Mans. After the race, the car was shipped directly back to Japan, just as it was, in order to help everyone understand the grueling race conditions. It wasn't even washed. Today however, the 787B is somewhat cleaner.

The many other items on display include a disassembled rotary engine, an explanation of how rotaries work and the Le Mans winner's trophy. It is an exhibition guaranteed to send a tingle along the spine of all rotary engine fans. For those of you wishing to visit the museum, please follow the link to the Mazda Museum website to make a reservation. (All visitors are asked to book in advance).