CarBrandLogos archive · Mazda · 1967

MazdaMazda Cosmo

It put the rotary engine on the road, then stayed strange for thirty years.

Photo: Mytho88 · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Mazda history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Mazda Cosmo, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Mazda licensed NSU's Wankel rotary in 1961 and then spent six years solving the problem that had defeated everyone else: chatter marks scored into the rotor housing by the apex seals. The team under Kenichi Yamamoto worked through seal materials until they arrived at carbon-aluminium, and the result went into the Cosmo Sport 110S, launched in May 1967 — among the first rotary-powered production cars in the world, and the one that proved the engine could be sold to the public.

Mazda Mazda Cosmo · 328cia, shot by permission of owner · Public domain

Design and engineering

It was effectively hand-built, at a rate of about one a day, with a low, wide body that looked like nothing else on the road and an engine so compact and smooth that it flattered a car of modest size. Around 1,500 were made. It also picked up an odd cultural afterlife as the Ultraman series' patrol car, which is how a generation of Japanese children first saw one.

Mazda121left 02 · Tennen-Gas · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

The name then drifted. From 1975 the Cosmo became a large personal luxury coupé, competing with the Toyota Soarer and Nissan Leopard, and by the 1980s it was a mid-size platform sold with piston engines alongside rotaries. The last act, though, was worth waiting for: the Eunos Cosmo of 1990 was a luxury grand tourer fitted with the 20B, a sequentially turbocharged three-rotor engine that no other production car has ever used. It ran until 1995, and Mazda has never built anything like it since.

L10B inst panel · 名古屋太郎 · Public domain

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1967–1995

Technical specification

The Mazda Cosmo, in detail.

Production: 1967–1995
Class: Sports car (1967–1981); Mid-size car (1981–1989); Grand tourer (1990–1995)
Layout: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Assembly: Japan: Hiroshima (Hiroshima Assembly)
Manufacturer: Mazda

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