The Mazda rotary (or Wankel) was almost a success. They drove so nice and just hummed along. They were new and exciting. But they were just becomming popular when the gas crisis hit. There was government mileage testing being done and the rotary did poorly in the test. Mazda asked for a re-test and made a big PR thing out of it. So everyone was watching and the re-test had bad results, now everyone new it. Few people wanted a small car with unproven technology that the government said got poor mileage. That cost mazda dearly! And before long they were advertising their "piston engine" cars. All the adds mentioned "piston engine". I really admire them for going the extra mile to develop the rotary but it really hurt them.

It didn't fail because it was "simple and lasted forever" as previously posted.

Wetspirit