Mazda's first "rotary rocket" 

On display at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville is a stunningly restored example of a 1968 Mazda Cosmo 110 A Series 1 coupe, the first car produced by the Japanese automaker that used the eccentric rotary design Wankel engine which the company made famous.

The Wankel rotary engine was envisioned German engineer Felix Wankel, who patented his engine design in 1929 and produced his first working prototype in 1957. Wankel’s creation offered the advantages of compact design and lighter weight over conventional connecting rod/crankshaft reciprocating engine designs. Wankel’s employer, the German car manufacturer NSU built the first Wankel powered car but also licensed the engine design to Mazda in 1961.

Mazda introduced the prototype Cosmo coupe at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1964, and after solving reliability problems with the engine production began in 1967. The first Cosmos were powered by a twin-rotor engine that developed 110 horsepower (thus the name of the car 110A), but in 1968 introduced the Cosmo series 2 which was fitted with a more powerful rotary engine that developed 126 horsepower. All Cosmos featured manual transmissions, the series 1 cars, a 4-speed box and the series 2 cars equipped with five-speed transmissions.

Mazda raced the 110A Cosmo Series 1 in only one race, the 1968 Marathon de la Route 84-hour endurance race on the torturous German Nürburgring circuit. Two Cosmos were entered to prove the rotary engine’s durability. One car, driven by an all-Japanese team, did not finish after an axle broke, but the second car piloted by a team of Belgian drivers finished the 84-hour grind in fourth place, albeit 12 laps behind the winning Porsche 911.       

The car shown at Blackhawk is a rare series 1, one of only 343 series 1 cars produced. The car is white with a black trimmed interior with black and white hounds-tooth cloth seat inserts and right-hand drive. The car was “resto-modded” in Japan in 2008; while it appears stock on the exterior, this car has an upgraded RX-7 engine, transmission and disc brakes and is fitted with aftermarket 15-wheel alloy wheels.

By the time Mazda ended production of the 110A Cosmo in the Fall of 1972, 1,176 of the hand-built cars had been built.  Mazda would go on to build nearly 2 million rotary powered cars and use a rotary powered car to win the 24 hours of LeMans in 1991 but produced its last RX-8 sports car in 2012.  

photos by the author