After rumors of recent years - and despite the launch of the Mazda RX-Vision Concept at the 2015 Tokyo Auto Show, Mazda CEO has ruled out any future sports car, especially the Mazda RX-9, that will have its trademark rotary engine.
It seems that the future Mazda RX-9 is increasingly far from becoming reality. Contrary to what was predicted, the 1.6-liter Skyactiv-R Nippon sports car may no longer hit the market in 2020.
In an interview with Automotive News and reported by Carthrottle, Masamichi Kogai, CEO of Mazda revealed that there are no types of plans to build a sports vehicle like the Mazda RX-9 Vision which is above the MX-5 and believes that the MX-5 1.5 or 2.0 with conventional engine has enough power and acceleration to give a more exhilarating experience than a rotary engine powered one.
Mazda is famous for many things, but the rotary-engined sports cars are the company’s most iconic creations to date. All hopes are not lost though as even though the Mazda RX-9 Vision is already killed off, it is said that Mazda's trademark engine will take part of some of their hybrid versions of recent models - probably as a range extender rather than as a main engine according to TopSpeed.
Mazda had always doubt if they will commercially develop a rotary engine and the reason why the Mazda RX-9 Vision with rotary engine is stopped is to perfect the system. Mazda believes that if they'll ever restart the production of the rotary engine again, they would want to be sure that it would stay for a long time. This means that it needs to comply with the emission standards of the future.
In the short term, Mazda is working on a new generation of Skyactiv technologies namely SKYACTIV-G gasoline and SKYACTIV-D diesel engine that will be implemented in its new models as early as 2019. We'll see if such technology can live up to the legendary rotary engine and if it is worth it to dropped the Mazda RX-9 Vision.
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