The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

18 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday August 13, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com FAMILY OWNED & OPERATED You'll Love Our Service! 905-335-4080 BURLINGTON LINE Mazda's rotary-powered RX-8 sportscar spins out another model in the R3 By Jim Robinson OAKVILLE BEAVER BAD CREDIT www.hawleypbc.com APPLY ON-LINE! NO CREDIT Everyone Deserves A Second Chance. We Can Re-establish Your Credit And Get You In A Vehicle And On The Road Today. Call Wally-905.330.1104 225 Dundas St. East, Mississauga At The Same Location For Over 60 Years Winkle, winkle little Wankel How I wonder if your crank'll, Torque enough to turn itself, Or will you wind up on the shelf. That little poem was penned by the John Dinkel, a 20-year veteran with Road & Track magazine in the 1970s and, one of the great automotive writers of all time. His poem kicked off a feature on the then new Wankel rotary engine that German carmaker NSU (now part of Audi) was trying to make viable. The problem was Dr. Felix Wankel invented it to power torpedoes for German U-Boats. It was never supposed to last longer than a few minutes so trying to create a permanent rotor seal was not an issue. It was almost as thirsty as most V8s of the day. The upside was the engine was near vibration-free, light, powerful and very compact. NSU could not make it work, as hard as they tried. Nor could General Motors, Daimler-Benz, Rolls-Royce and Citroen. But the little known Mazda company in Japan gave it a go. After literally thousands of substances were tried, including horsehair, they got the rotor to seal at the apexes for an acceptably long period. Then on May 30, 1967, Mazda launched the world's first twin-rotor engined car, the Mazda Cosmo Sport. Today, four decades on, the company is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Mazda rotary engine. In the years between, Mazda has produced nearly two million vehicles powered by the rotary engine. The first vehicle Mazda sold in North America was the 1970 R100, powered by the rotary engine. It was followed by the RX-2, RX-3, RX-4 and RX-5 Cosmo. The 1970s even saw Mazda install the rotary engine in its Rotary Pickup truck. Continued on Page 20