(first posted 12/22/2016; revised, augmented and re-illustrated 12/22/2022) Here we go for the final installment of the First Batch of the French Deadly Sins. In doing these in chronological order (see Part 1 and Part 2 here), the juiciest Sin was left for last. This is the story of the downfall of a giant, full of hubris and shortsightedness akin to General Motors and British Leyland: Citroën and its woeful Wankel-engined waif, the 1973-75 GS Birotor.
Citroën always was a particularly daring company — and as such, they went belly up for the first time in 1934, just as the founder André Citroën went all in on the revolutionary Traction Avant, which I covered in a previous post. The company was bought out by Michelin and the Traction eventually became a hit, but the experience had been pretty harrowing. Twenty years later, the launch of the DS had been just as ambitious, but economic conditions in 1955 were a lot better than during the Depression, so the company weathered the new car’s invariably difficult birth much better. Besides, the presence of the fabulously popular 2CV in the range enabled the carmaker to keep a healthy bank balance while they experimented with hydropneumatics and other oddities on their bigger cars.
The problem with the Citroën range in the ’50s and ’60s was that they had a gaping hole between their little 400cc flat-twin cars and their sophisticated 2-litre self-levelling spaceship. That gap, really more of a chasm, allowed Peugeot, Renault and Simca to compete for family compacts, comprised between 1 and 1.5 litres, without any answer from Citroën. From 1955 on, they did have a mid-range car in that Panhards were sold by the Citroën network, as we saw yesterday. But brilliant though they were, Citroën dealers still felt like they were a bit of a cuckoo in their nest.
And by about 1960, even as they took a controlling interest in Panhard, it was clear that Citroën needed a mid-range car of their own. The first attempt was the C60 shown above, which was a bit like a cross between a DS and the upcoming Ami6. The Citroën engineers and top brass decided to start again from scratch, leading to the equally ill-fated “Projet F.” That car was supposed to be in the 1-litre range and be available with a simplified hydro suspension or a 2CV-like solution for cheaper models. A 1965 launch was mooted, and the Panhard range was allowed to wither until then. Alas, the F was not ready on time, and eventually the whole project had to be cancelled for a variety of reasons.
Oblivious to all these red flags, the double-chevron doubled down on its ravenous appetite for ailing competitors. Having eaten Panhard, the consumed Berliet and took a keen interest in Maserati, eventually buying that company outright in 1968. Contacts were also taken with Fiat to have something to sell in the range where the F and the Panhards used to be: in the late ’60s, French market Citroën brochures included the Autobianchi Primula. Around this time, Citroën also co-founded the Comotor, a joint venture with NSU that would manufacture the revolutionary Wankel rotary engine for both companies. A Comotor factory was built in Saarland by 1969 and started manufacturing engines for the NSU Ro80 (another Deadly Sin in its own right).
The peculiar Citroën M35 had a Comotor engine; about 270 were built by Heuliez in 1969-71
Citroën looked into a single-rotor variant, purposefully testing the engine in a novel way: by selling it to a very limited amount of “consumer-testers” as the M35 coupé. Citroën guaranteed that the M35 owner would receive technical assistance free of charge. In exchange, owners had to clock at least 30,000 km per year in their M35, paying for gas, tyres, etc., themselves and report regularly as to their car’s performance. Citroën also promised to buy back the used M35 at a very good price. This ingenious plan enabled Citroën to try out several new concepts for relatively little risk, but at quite a cost: making the M35 wasn’t cheap (it was in fact sold at a loss) and buying them back afterwards was downright ruinous.
Pierre Bercot, Citroën CEO (1958 – 1971), made a lot of questionable decisions, including the Wankel program
Nevertheless, it was felt that enough was now known about the Wankel engine to warrant a true production version. The CX, then in development, was an obvious candidate, but Citroën bigwigs felt that waiting until late 1974, the car’s planned launch date, was probably too far away. Besides, a mooted tri-rotor design would probably be better suited for the CX. A twin-rotor car should be premiered before that: one of the findings of the M35 experiment was that a single rotor was too small for the kind of car Citroën had in mind. But the firm, now deep in debt, wanted to do this somewhat on the cheap and hedge its bets.
The fate of NSU, the Comotor’s other partner, served as a clear warning: Wankel engines were a very risky venture. If one model were to be launched with it, said model might just sink the company. The original NSU twin-rotor had several issues, but the most damning one was its lack of durability. Some Ro80 engines gave up the ghost after 20,000km or less, leading to costly warranty replacements. Mazda, the other main user of rotary engines, also had problems with its engines.
Citroën were confident that their Wankel would be better prepared on this front. It was virtually the same as the NSU motor, but with the benefit of five years of additional testing. The water-cooled twin-rotor displaced 995cc, producing a commendable 107 hp (DIN) @ 6500 rpm – a little less than the NSU unit. The apex of the rotors were the key, and Comotor had devised better and far more durable apex seals by the early ‘70s.
The question now was: what car would serve as the host for the hot new engine? The DS was seen as too passé, so it had to be the new mid-range car, the Citroën GS. Developed from the ashes of the F and with a lot of new blood poached from Panhard, the GS was launched in late 1970 to much critical acclaim. Finally, after nearly two decades of false starts, bad luck, indecision and technological culs-de-sac, the Citroën range had a mid-sizer with a brand new 1-litre air-cooled flat-4, a slippery fastback shape and the firm’s trademark hydropneumatic suspension. A high-end variant with a Wankel engine would be just the thing to bridge the remaining gap with the lower-end ID/DS range.
To save money, virtually nothing would be different on the GS Birotor (named GZ in Citroën’s internal documentation) compared to its flat-4 siblings. The plush Pallas version, with carpets and seats so soft they felt like buttered marshmallows floating on a bed of helium balloons, was selected. After all, the Birotor would be the range-topping GS. Externally, only the flared wheel arches gave the car away as a Wankel model, dictated by wider tyres. The other giveaway was the colour scheme: two-tone brown or gray.
But any money saved by making the Birotor outwardly identical to the normal GS was spent in the Wankel model’s bespoke platform, larger fuel tank, post-combustion exhaust system (that literally cooked anything in the trunk) and transmission.
Inside, the GS’s curious collection of gauges and lights gave way to a very no-nonsense (but a tad crude-looking) array of round Jaeger dials. The message was: this car’s engine needs to be closely monitored, so we don’t want the driver to be distracted by our usual Citroën quirks. Hydropneumatic suspension was included as on the other GS models of course, as were hydraulically-powered brakes and steering. The transmission was based on the NSU Ro80’s semi-automatic design: a three-speed box operated via a floor-mounted shifter.
The GS Birotor came out mere weeks before the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. One of the Wankel’s known faults was its prodigious thirst. Compared to the 1.2 flat-4, which was already criticized for its appetite, the GS Birotor drank a minimum of 13 litres / 100 km (18 mpg). The sale sticker also proved rather unpalatable for the average buyer: FF 25,000 – as expensive as a DS for a car that looked virtually identical to a FF 15,400 flat-4 GS.
Unsurprisingly, the GS Birotor was a sales disaster. With fewer than 700 cars sold in 1974, the game was up before it started. Citroën were hemorrhaging cash on all fronts by this point: Maserati, which they had owned since 1969, was deep in the red; the GS programme, which had cost the company so much, was not profitable with the Birotor; DS sales slumped as the new CX was launched; the flat-4 engined Ami Super was a complete flop; SM sales dwindled to nothing. The investments sunk into new factories, as well as the new flagship CX were substantial, but at least the CX might succeed in making money one day. Only the 2-cyl. cars were still selling somewhat – but for meagre profit. Mid-1974, Citroën had over 120,000 cars in stock and were looking at a loss of FF 500 million that might double by the year’s end.
Bankruptcy loomed and crisis talks were brokered by the government. Michelin, Citroën’s main investor since 1935, wanted out. Maserati was sold off immediately to De Tomaso; Berliet, a truck-maker absorbed by Citroën in 1967, was purchased by Renault, much to Michelin’s dismay. The French government having vetoed any foreign buyout of Citroën (Fiat had been circling the skies above for years) and given Michelin’s strong aversion to nationalization (i.e. selling to Renault), there was but one viable solution: Peugeot.
Citroën’s mass extinction event of 1975-76 — only the 19-year-old DS got a farewell party…
In December 1974, the lion bought 35% of the double-chevron. The takeover took about 18 months to finalize. In the meantime, Citroën stopped making the DS and the SM by 1975 and the flat-4-powered Ami Super by 1976. But the first to go, the no-brainer, was the GS Birotor, which was put out of its misery in January 1975, having tallied only 874 sales in 18 months.
A rare survivor I captured a while back…
Soon, Citroën began to actively seek out all GS Birotor owners to offer them a huge rebate on a new CX. Citroën (and Peugeot) determined that the financial liabilities involved in keeping even the very limited number of GS Birotors in circulation outweighed all other considerations. Comotor was going to be wound down due to the planned death of NSU in 1977 anyway. With all surviving GS Birotor warranties null and void, Citroën destroyed all of those it had bought back from its clients, especially the engines. Hydraulic punching machines were used to pierce all the Wankel blocks to make them unusable and a special government order was issued exempting Citroën from keeping any GS Birotor parts in their inventory.
…and another one I snapped a few years later
Very few GS Birotor made it to the present. Having talked to an owner once, it seems the engine itself is pretty durable – it was probably one of the best rotary cars of the ‘70s. Perhaps if Citroën had waited a couple of years and put the Wankel in the CX, things might have turned out differently. The engine was tested on the CX extensively as late as 1979. But as it played out, it was a poorly reasoned attempt from Citroën: the engine and the price of the car did not match the image of the GS, a reasonably-priced small family car. Because they wanted to keep spending to a minimum, Citroën made an expensive car that looked like a cheap one, which would have been sales poison even without the Oil Shock. Of course, the timing of the launch was critical in making the downfall so dramatic and nudging Citroën toward insolvency.
The GS Birotor wasn’t the only albatross around its maker’s neck in 1974, but it was the newest and most expensive one. And when an automaker actively seeks to buy back its product and send every unit to the crusher, it feels as if they knew that was their Deadliest Sin.
So there we have it, three Deadly Sins from three decades that killed three French automakers in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, including one of the French “Big Trois” (Citroën, Peugeot, Renault). There are plenty of other DSs out there though. A British edition could be pondered, for instance…
Related posts:
Cohort Classic: Citroën GS – One For The Anoraks, by Perry Shoar
Curbside Classic: Citroën GS 1200 Club Break, by JohnH875
Daaaaayum! Citroen wasn’t playing around getting these off the streets. How interesting that hefty incentives on new CXs was deemed cheaper than warranty repairs! Perhaps the owners who said they were so reliable were just responsible owners who followed the maintenance schedule to the letter, and these really were ticking time bombs for anyone else.
I’ve never understood why so many automakers were so obsessed with rotary engines in the 1970s (eg. GM, AMC, Citroen). What was the appeal? They have lousy fuel economy and sound awful. Am I missing something here?
And Citroëns are like that still today, if the owner didn’t follow accurately the maintenance schedule any model becomes a money drain… In Brazil Citroën has an upscale image if compared to Peugeot, but like luxury cars, Citroëns are good for the first owner, second hand they are trouble.
I wondered the same thing when I was writing the Mazda Luce piece and I think Aaron Severson nailed it for that one; a more compact power unit. But it’s more than that, certainly the smooth power delivery but the other is engineer admiration; here was an idea that in principle seemed to improve on the internal combustion engine with a simpler solution – catnip to engineers. It’s just that its had its downsides as well.
Fascinating read T87. The default for owners of any old rotary car these days is just to replace the motor with a 13B (I recently met someone with a pristine R100 who had done just that and have heard of the same fate for Ro80s), but I can’t imagine someone doing that to a Birotor. For some reason, this episode reminds me of the Chrysler turbine story, although that didn’t kill the company and in fact seemed to sustain a halo despite its relative non-success.
The specific appeal of the rotary engine in the early ’70s was, to put it in two words, NOx emissions. The Wankel’s other characteristics were interesting, but it was emissions that got GM to pony up $50 million (more than $280 million in today’s dollars) just for license fees. After the Muskie Act passed in the U.S., the NOx limits it specified looked very difficult to meet with reciprocating engines — there was a lot of fairly serious outcry that they were actually technologically impossible. While Europe wouldn’t adopt NOx standards that stringent for many years, both Australia and Japan looked at the Muskie Act as a reference point for their national emissions standards, so it was a real international concern.
After the OPEC embargo, the rotary’s thirst abruptly became a prohibitive issue, so the idea that the Wankel would replace the reciprocating engine faded very quickly in favor of cleaning up the reciprocating engine (initially with stratified charge combustion and thermal reactors, eventually catalytic converters and electronic injection).
The comparison to the Chrysler turbine is mostly in that Chrysler did a comparable customer-testing program that ended with most of the cars and engines destroyed to avoid customs duties and other legal issues. The big distinction is that Chrysler was considerably less invested in actually marketing the gas turbine in passenger cars — it was an interesting exercise, but there was no pressing need for it, it presented more headaches for emissions (which is what finally killed the program in the latter ’70s), and Chrysler wasn’t nearly as overextended financially.
I have found in my 50 years on this planet, only weird people care about fuel mileage (at least here in the States, your results may vary), the rest of us just fill up and be done with it. The rotary at full song is, to me, music to my ears. The appeal? light weight, compact size, few moving parts, lack of vibration, incredible output for said weight (if a wee bit down on low end torque). Even Outboard Marine Corporation experimented with rotary powered outboard engines.
Ha. OMC didn’t just experiment with rotary engines, they actually manufactured them and put them in……. snowmobiles!
Very Very cheap fuel is the reason US drivers care little about fuel consumption unfortunately its not dirt cheap everywhere else.
I don’t understand suzulight’s comment. Despite virtually free fuel, most Americans I’ve ever had conversations with on this subject have been borderline paranoid about fuel prices.
Brits, (who to be fair pay far more for fuel than Americans) also seem to obsess over fuel costs to the point that they will overpay to buy a fuel efficient car, spend more on depreciation and maintenance in order to save a pittance in fuel, and *think* they are saving money.
I’ve read that AMC went so far as to investigate buying wankel engines from Comotor for the Pacer when GM cancelled their rotary program. They were too expensive. It is probably just as well, the Pacer was a big enough disaster even with AMC’s reliable conventional drivetrain.
It’s kind of a shame they didn’t make the resale of the Buick V6 to GM contingent on a supply of engines for the Pacer.
In addition to the other qualities listed by other commenters, the rotary’s very compact size and light weight was extremely attractive for packaging purposes with the big switch to FWD all over the world.
It’s also important to note that although the rotary’s fuel efficiency was worse than the cars typically compared to it (in the same size class) but when compared to the same performance, it wasn’t really any worse. The RX2, which was quite popular in the US, was much faster than any of the piston-engined “economy cars”, but it performed on the level of American V8 cars, and got comparable mileage.
Also, the rotary had drastically fewer parts, which raised the hope that it could eventually be built cheaper than a piston engine.
One of the things that really dinged its future was the turbocharger, which also became more functional and popular in the 70s and 80s. It allowed small piston engines to have much more performance for their size and weight, negating any remaining benefits of the rotary.
Balance-shaft equipped 4-cylinder engines became much smoother too.
Small turbocharged, balance-shaft equipped 4-cylinder engines sealed the fate of the rotary. Ironically, today Mazda makes one of the best examples of such engines.
“I’ve never understood why so many automakers were so obsessed with rotary engines in the 1970s (eg. GM, AMC, Citroen). What was the appeal?”
I came here to ask exactly that question, although I’d planned to toss lack of low end torque into the list of rotary engine problems.
In general, the cars rotary engines have been put into haven’t seemed to take any special advantage because of the engine design, and some of the planned application like use in the AMC Pacer would have been disastrous….the Pacer had enough problems already trying to be a normal car.
I was thinking exactly the same thing; they weren’t messing around when they took those cars off the road. I’m almost surprised Citroen didn’t abduct the owners as well, “The Prisoner” style, so no word would get out. “Rotary cars? We never had a rotary car. Isn’t that right, Number Six ?”
William, you’re missing nothing. A truly horrid exhaust ‘note’!
Tatra87, thank you for this week’s in depth French Deadly Sins articles. I enjoyed them and learned some new things along the way.
Regarding this DS, there was a “Birotor sideshow”; 38 of them ended up in the Van Veen OCR 1000 motorcycle. Here’s an interesting read, in English:
http://www.odd-bike.com/2012/12/van-veen-ocr-1000-dutch-wankel-powered.html
And we can’t forget about the Suzuki RE5 rotary motorcycle, a bike CYCLE magazine said its exhaust note sounded like “a B-29 with engine trouble” They command some serious bucks today.
And almost sank Suzuki completely. The Wankel was supposed to be the successor to Suzuki’s two-stroke twins and triples, and its mechanical shortcomings and sales failure (waaaay overpriced compared to the competition, and didn’t have the performance to match the price) almost drove the company to bankruptcy.
As a last ditch effort to save the company, Suzuki basically copied Kawasaki’s in-line four cylinder, DOHC engines, brought out a full line of bikes from 500-1000cc’s, and saved the company. They became so common that they’re usually considered the basis for the term Universal Japanese Motorcycle (UJM).
There was also the Hercules W-2000, the first Wankel-powered motorcycle to be sold through a dealer network. Full production began in 1974, with fewer than 2,000 sold.
Thanks for posting that, I thought of the Citroen powered OCR 1000 too. Perhaps it’s time for a feature on motorcycles powered by car engines. Offhand I can think of the Munch Mammut which used a modified NSU Prinz engine and the Amazonas which used a VW Beetle engine. Plus the utterly ridiculous Boss Hoss which was/is a Small Block Chevy powered more or less motorcycle.
The department chair of the College of Business Management at my university had a Boss Hoss, which he’d ride to work on nice days. Definitely an absurd machine, but also rather impressive…
This one I can for a change offer a couple of notes:
One of the goals of the Comotor joint venture was to eventually sell rotary engines not just to NSU and Citroën, but also to others. Prior to the October War, that seemed like an exciting opportunity; NSU had made a fair bit of money licensing the rotary technology, and being able to sell complete engines promised to expand that market, particularly given the excitement about the rotary’s lower NOx emissions. Had things turned out differently, one of the customers might well have been VAG, since concessions to minority shareholders when Audi bought NSU greatly limited Volkswagen’s ability to use the Wankel in non-NSU products. (I assume there would have been no issue with buying them from Comotor for Volkswagens or Audis, since the royalties would have been built into the selling price.)
The semiautomatic transmission in the Ro80 was the Saxomat, built for NSU by Fitchel & Sachs (which today I believe has been absorbed by ZF). NSU hadn’t had great results with mating the rotary with a conventional gearbox because the engine would “snatch” nastily when you closed the throttle to change gears. Also, even the two-rotor engines weren’t exactly stump-pullers off-idle, so the torque converter multiplication was beneficial.
NSU actually planned a second-generation Ro80 that would still have been rotary-powered, with an improved and enlarged 1.5-liter engine. It came surprisingly close to production, but VAG decided that they couldn’t afford the rotary AND the new diesels and figured the latter were a better bet.
Here’s a question, given the talk about taxation: How did France treat the rotary for tax purposes? I know the GS Birotor brochure calls it 11 CV — does that mean it was treated as 1,990cc?
I just read an article by Paul Frere in an old R&T where he was given an advance drive in a turbocharged Audi 100 sedan. He said that it was what killed Audi’s plans to build a three-rotor top-tier Audi sedan. For a few million dollars in investment, the 170 hp turbo five cylinder could do everything (and more) than the three-rotor engine under consideration, but VAG would have had to spend something like $250 million to develop and build the rotary. Turbo engines really were another coffin nail, as they allowed light, small but powerful engines without any of the drawbacks of the rotary.
Also, Ferdinand Piëch at the time felt that diesel technology was a wiser pursuit over continued rotary development, and as history shows, he was certainly right. The budget allocated for the rotary program was subsequently diverted towards diesel.
Yes, this is specifically what I’m talking about.
Also, to Paul’s point, that’s also true, although it’s worth noting that Audi-NSU had already abandoned the three-rotor engine in favor of an enlarged two-rotor of about 1.5 liters actual displacement. The latter was making about the same power as the turbo five in the 200 when Piëch decided to pull the plug.
This may be a good place to mention that even Mercedes-Benz was working on the Wankel engine. They had a powerful 3 rotor engine in their C111 experimental car. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_C111
Sorry AteUp, I missed where you already pointed out what I said in my reply to Paul above. My bad!
Thanks for the additional info, Aaron!
The Citroen torque converter may have been developed for the Birotor, but it was used in the CX for quite a few years as well. It was called the C-Matic and was an optional transmission for the CX until the early ’80s. It was also available on the normal GS. What I don’t know is whether the C-Matic is partially or totally related to the Saxomat.
As far as the “fiscal power” rating / tax band is concerned, I understand that the French authorities (and Citroen itself) considered the displacement in a Wankel to be worth twice the displacement of a piston engine. Therefore, the Birotor’s 995cc would indeed be around 2 litres, i.e. 11 CV. Same as a DS or CX base model — which makes the price of the Birotor seem a little less crazy.
My guess would be that the C-Matic was also an adaptation of the Saxomat, tailored to suit the slightly different torque characteristics of the various engines. Porsche and Volkswagen also used versions of the Saxomat for a while (there was a four-speed as well as a three-speed version), so it was a relatively common off-the-shelf solution.
If I’m recalling correctly, when Citroën finally offered a true automatic on the DS, it was the common Borg-Warner 35 rather than anything proprietary, so it seems like they were no longer wholly opposed to bought-in solutions.
Yes, the DS could be had with either a 3speed BW autobox, the 4speed Citroen hydraulic gearbox or the 5 speed Citroen “normal” gearbox (a rare “5 on the tree” configuration).
The CX had the old 4speed manual gearbox in base and Diesel ranges, or the 5 speed manual, or the 3speed C-matic semi-auto (no clutch pedal). The hydraulic box of the DS was ditched, as was the Borg-Warner. Then in 1981, the fully autobox came back on, now a ZF unit.
The C-Matic was dropped after 1983 from the GSA. It was on of the last semi-auto boxes made before electronics got involved.
5 on the tree? I’ve never seen or heard of that. 4 yes, I’ve driven them, but 5? Wow.
5 on the tree isnt rare numerous Japanese pickups were built that way in RHD so you can have three people across the cab Nissan was still doing them in the 90s, no they are not fun to drive.
Fascinating – never knew Citroen offered a Wankel until reading this.
A great close to this series. Is this the first use of “Mass Extinction Event” in a CC article?
In hindsight it’s amazing how much the rotary engine affected the auto industry, because it’s biggest effect was the damage it did to every company that tried to use it. Only Mazda succeeded long term.
I think Mazda succeeded because all their early rotary vehicles had a decent piston alternative. None of their core vehicles were rotary-only, and the ones that had rotaries probably had a lot more parts interchange with the piston models, compared to the GS Birotor.
Mazda realized early on that the rotary’s power and torque characteristics suited it to sports car use (hence the RX7), and from the late seventies restricted its non-RX7 usage to the top Luce models until they had a V6.
Thanks Tatra87, great article! I was aware that Citroen had serious financial problems in the mid’1970’s but never read what were the causes. If a company is in precarious condition to start, doesn’t take much more than one model to flop to sink the company. The Hudson Jet-type debacles occur everywhere managements make poor decisions over and over again.
The fundamental reason for the rotary engine obsession is a marketing concept called “product differentiation”. We see it everywhere with products in the mature part of their lifecycle, including cars. Auto makers and their advertisers work hard to make and promote those features and benefits that make their cars different than competitors.
The average consumer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference from one engine to another. Differences in displacement, configuration and valve gear don’t do much, no matter how vigorously the car announces this on the trunk lid.
But the rotary engine is heaven-sent for marketers. An utterly new engine design totally different than the me-too piston engines feeds right into popular marketing strategy. Of course, fuel consumption and poor reliability concerns eventually sunk the most vigorous marketing efforts.
After the rotary engine debacle, marketers consoled themselves by slapping EFI or TURBO badges on everything in sight
I don’t fully agree. The rotary offered the prospect of a much smaller, lighter yet powerful engine with many fewer moving parts. That was an extremely compelling prospect in Europe and Japan, where size and weight were much more important, especially with the move to FWD. It was an engineer’s dream, until it turned into a nightmare.
Certainly, there was a marketing prospect too. There always has to be, in order to sell the iron. But as AUWM wrote elsewhere here, the rotary’s lower NOX output alone was a primary reason for GM’s interest. It was a difficult time for automakers, between making cars smaller and lighter and dealing with rapidly changing emission limits.
Yes, the turbo (and FI) was the solution to the problem that the rotary didn’t solve. But again, these were hardly marketing-driven for the most part, as they too solved critical engineering problems at the time.
I don’t agree with your assessment that “The average consumer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference from one engine to another”. I personally experienced that friends who were rotary engine customers were well aware of what the wanted to buy. To whit, let me explain.
In 1974, on a return trip to Australia (Oz) to visit family and friends, I spend a delightful day with dear old family friends in Sydney, NSW. Both the father and son had a pair of near identical RX3 Mazda cars. With great enthusiasm I was driven in and then given the encouragement and opportunity to drive their cars. I fondly remember those driving experiences.
What I remember more vividly, was the enthusiasm of both of them for their “Rotaries” as they continually referred to their cars. They were both well aware of the types of engines in their cars, and ” Rotary” was a very important buzz word for them.
After our drives, we shared a delightful meal with delightful Shiraz wines during and after the meal..All throughout that meal, there was continual discussion about their Mazda rotaries and how much they loved their cars and the engine characteristics. It was a delightful time in Sydney for me accented by a real “Rotary” experience.
If it was due to marketing enthusiasm or not, that rotary engine experience was truly worthwhile and memorable then, and later when I had the opportunity to drive a new RX8 in the early 1980’s.
Enthusiastic customers will always know what they are buying and driving.
opps. correction. It was an RX7 in the early 1980’s not an RX8.
Wow, what a finale! I cannot recall ever reading about this.
The entire early 1970s rotary engine thing is almost like a classic bubble. There was this huge buildup, everyone just *knew* that it was the next big thing. It was in deep development on three different continents. Then – poof! Even the Mazda was never more than a niche product, and I suspect that the storied RX-7 would have sold just as well (if not better) with a standard piston engine.
It is fascinating how many ideas have come along that were supposed to improve on the Otto cycle piston engine, but which never came to pass in any significant way. Electricity is the new frontier, which looks more promising. However, it is still early . . . .
The Mazda RX2 and RX3 sold quite well here; they were the mainstay of their lineup, and largely the basis for their initial success. And if the energy crisis hadn’t come along, that would presumably have continued to be so.
The RX7 had a superb balance and exceptional performance when it came out that would not have been possible with the piston technology of the time. It was a solid second faster 0-60 than the Datsun 280Z, and handled much better. And was cheaper to boot. The original RX7 was really the best rotary car ever, inasmuch as it took the best advantage of the rotary’s qualities, and was specifically designed around that engine, rather than the typical scenario of a rotary being adapted to an existing design.
Yes, if an engine like the Miata’s had been available at the time, it would have been a good alternative. But in the 70s, piston engine technology and performance were still a long way off from that level.
In the early ’70s Mazda had a policy (I believe) that any car that had a rotary must also accept a piston engine. RX-2 was a 616. RX-3 was an 808.
The RX-7 was really the first mainstream rotary Mazda (discounting the early Mazda Cosmo and low-production FWD Luce Rotary Coupe) that was not also available with a piston engine. In the home market, the rotary was generally considered the step-up engine, comparable to the hotter 2-liter engines offered on rivals. For instance, what was sold here as the Mazda 616 was known as the Mazda Capella, and our RX-2 was the Capella RE.
By the late seventies, the rotary engine was considered too thirsty to be viable as a step-up engine for family cars, so Mazda started limiting it to luxury and sports models like the Luce and Cosmo. However, the Savanna, the rotary version of the smaller Grande Familia (Mazda 808/818), was still doing pretty well in coupe form, especially since you could get the more powerful 13B rotary from the bigger cars.
So, Mazda decided to separate the Savanna more decisively from the Grande Familia, dumping the sedan and wagon versions (which were not selling well) and replacing the coupe with a new rotary-only two-seater, the Savanna RX-7, aimed at the Datsun Fairlady Z/240Z/260Z/280Z. In that segment, fuel consumption wasn’t as big a deal, as the rotary was being sold more as a lighter, revvier alternative to a six.
” I suspect that the storied RX-7 would have sold just as well (if not better) with a standard piston engine. ”
That certainly would not be the case in Japan. The rotary specifically kept the Savanna RX-7 under the 1.5 liter bracket for Japan’s annual road tax, which was not a small amount of money for the times. This played a big role in the car’s instant success, as no other car within that same annual taxation class came close to the performance the Mazda offered.
Thanks for these articles. I would love to see the British version as well!
Yes, but I think it would take more than three articles 🙂
Need to make room for a lot more than three deadly sins!
I think British Leyland, like GM, should have its own series. Virtually every car they made was worthy of Deadly Sin status starting with the Mini. I mean, consider the Marina/Ital, the Allegro, the SD1, the Austin 3-litre, the Metro, the Maestro, the Ambassador, the Triumph Acclaim… very rich pickings there. Not for me, I’m sure someone with better knowledge of BL could (and should) start it off. It was, after all, an even bigger downfall than GM in many ways. From Global leader in 1945 to nationalization in 1975 and the final death of MG-Rover in 2005.
I might have a bash at a few non-BL cars, though.
And there are a few more french DSs I could have a look into — I just picked three as an arbitrary number. Perhaps a second batch of three French DSs in a few weeks?
I’ll second that! BL is certainly a target-rich environment, as they say.
I might take a crack at a BL DS series in 2017…
Add BL AU and almost everything they built was a deadly sin
Interesting order for closing postmortem, “Big Trois” (Citroën, Peugeot, Renault)… CPR.
Fantastic series! Here at the Lane, I am surrounded by many of these deadly sins, as well as several from other countries.
By the way, if Curbside Classic would ever like to do another meet up in Nashville, maybe we could provide a Comotor comparison test of sorts, between our GS Birotor, our Ro80, and the M35 prototype. We believe we have the only M-35 left in North America.
Great to see you on here Rex! I’m going to be in Nashville in January and will probably come in a little early so I can visit the Lane again.
Thanks for a thoroughly enjoyable mini-series. I loved every word of this article, and had no idea there had been a rotary Citroen. I must ask why the lovely Ro80 is considered a deadly sin, though I suspect it’s more about powertrain than design.
Because it killed NSU? About as deadly as it gets, despite the good looks. 🙂
Some 40 years ago, I read a book by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu called “Lost Causes of Motoring”. There was a chapter on Hotchkiss, with similar conclusions. Somehow I think that “Lost Causes” applies better to these marques than “Deadly Sin”.
I enjoyed finding out more about the Birotor, and the preceding French installments. Thanks for the article.
I think the distinction should be drawn between technically successful models (which ultimately fail in the marketplace for reasons beyond their creator’s control – geopolitical upheavals, or basic economics, for example) and those which deservedly fail because they are cynical, hastily contrived, technically outdated, poorly constructed, fragile, ugly, parts-binned, badge-engineeded, bean counter-ed penalty boxes.
The former are heroic and optimistic about an advanced future and the latter, well, they and their makers truly deserve contempt.
Should the SJ Duesenberg be a deadly akin to the Cimmaron? Not in my estimation.
I’m glad the SM and its pals were built even if they were dead ends. Sure they don’t work for every buyer in application but even as such they are what we dream of.
Never knew about the Citroen rotary engine effort, that was a very interesting read Tatra87. The mental image of those hydraulic presses punching holes in the rotary blocks is quite powerful.
Citroen could have avoided the GS Birotor by either:
1) Designing the GS Flat-4 to allow room for development of larger displacement variants up to 1600cc.
2) Appropriate the 90+ hp 2-litre Flat-4 Panhard X4 engine as its own.
3) Develop a 1600cc Inline-4 derived from the Citroen CX, especially since a similar Inline-4 of such a displacement was considered for Citroen’s Project F that preceded what became the Citroen GS.
Good point. I always thought Citroen dropped a huge clanger by not leaving enough room for development when the GS flat four was designed.
The 1400-1600cc overbore Kits (albeit via 1300cc units) for the GS engines suggest that it was indeed possible though guess that would have been too conventional for Citroen to pursue, who decided to instead invest in rotary engines with NSU leading to both marques going bust.
Citroënët says Citroën did develop a transverse version of the existing DS19 engine, with which the flat-four was originally supposed to coexist.
http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/gs/flat-4/engine.html
It certainly opens up questions as to how the 1600cc transverse version of the DS19 engine would have developed (powering the F Project or GS) given the DS engine would be further developed into the related Citroen M-Series that powered the Citroen CX.
The M-Series spawned petrol and diesel variants with both going on to feature turbocharged versions.
Still it seems more logical for the GS (or Project F) to feature 950-1600cc Flat-4 engines possibly topped by the 2-litre Flat-4 from the shelved Panhard X4 engine project.
Find it fascinating that the 2CV Flat-Twin was to be bored out to 750cc for Project F (with big bore kits further increasing the displacement to 800-850cc+), though it is a shame that the 850cc Panhard Flat-Twin was never utilized more by Citroen.
Apparently from the following Italian article (and elsewhere online), one 850 Panhard Flat-Twin (sourced from the Panhard 24 Tigre) even found its way inside a Fiat 500 allowing the latter to reach almost 112 mph.
http://fiat500nelmondo.it/la-fiat-500-missile-da-180-kmh/
Is there a car maker who used and then wasn’t wasn’t burned by the Rotary engine?
Citroen didnt manage to find all their rotaries for destruction , somebody in New Zealand got one and found the parts to restore it and recently put it back on the road.
Citroens continue in production today sharing petrol engines with Peugeot and diesel engines with Peugeot and Ford, the diesels are reliable economical and long lived.