Word: mazda
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With less than 1% of U.S. auto sales to its credit and a headquarters staff of exactly 30 people, Mazda Motors of America seems a trifle small to qualify as a monopoly. Yet for nearly two more years, or until Detroit is ready with its own rotary engine, Mazda will be the only car sold in the U.S. with the rotary: a power system, first designed by West Germany's Felix Wankel, that is half the size of the conventional piston engine and has only three moving parts, v. 166 in a piston engine with comparable horsepower...
...been racing through the West since it was introduced about two years ago. In California, Mazda is already the fourth-biggest-selling import, ahead of Fiat and Volvo. U.S. sales have grown from almost nothing in 1970 to an estimated 60,000 this year, and are expected by company officers to at least double next year. Mazda officials expect the operation to reach optimum size in 1975, with 655 dealers selling 300,000 cars annually. That could well put Mazda among the top five car sellers, about even with American Motors...
Much of the credit for Mazda's forward drive goes to C.R. ("Dick") Brown, who became general manager of the main U.S. operation two years ago. The parent company, Toyo Kogyo, had previously set up separate importers in the Northwest and Florida. Brown convinced his Japanese bosses that they should quickly mount a high-volume marketing effort throughout the nation. A former sales director for American Motors in Canada, Brown realized that the key to Mazda's acceptance would be a strong lineup of dealers who could explain and service the unfamiliar engine...
Even so, David Cole and other researchers are convinced that they are on the way toward ironing out the remaining problems with the Wankel. Rotary engines now available, including the Mazda, says Cole, are "equivalent to a 1930s' piston engine in development. The comparison between that and what we will see in a couple of years will be quite impressive." The Wankel seems finally to be doing what automen long thought impossible: ending Detroit's long love affair with the standard engine, or at least making an interesting triangle...
...plans for the Wankel are still under wraps, U.S. automakers try to remain noncommittal in public. Occasionally they do not succeed. A top GM engineering executive told TIME Detroit Bureau Chief Ed Reingold: "Just wait until you see our rotary-it's ten times better than the Mazda." And just when might that be? GM officers will not answer, but according to persistent rumors around Detroit, the company will offer rotary engines as an option on '75 Vegas and perhaps a year later on a compact. Most engineers agree that rotary engines will first become available on subcompacts...