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Toyo Kogyo officials recently surprised other manufacturers by saying that they have "a fairly bright outlook" about meeting federal emissions standards for '75 and '76 models. U.S. automakers have flatly said that those rules, which would reduce by 90% the pollutants spewed out by a 1970 car, are impossibly strict. Mazda's equanimity was apparently based on the fact that Wankel engines operate at temperatures about 10% lower than standard internal-combustion engines do and thus produce fewer oxides of nitrogen, the primary target of the emission standards for the mid-1970s.
Since Detroit's 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 and progress to larger-sized cars.
Yet there is no inherent reason why rotary engines will not ultimately be suitable for any U.S. car. GM is believed to be experimenting with a Corvette outfitted with a rotary engine placed just behind the driver's seat, in the midsection of the car. Because Wankel-type power plants are only half the size of normal ones, Detroit's designers are having a field day trying out rearrangements of a car's basic features. Says David Cole, head of the University of Michigan's auto engineering laboratory and the son of GM President Edward Cole: "The rotary is going to help make the automobile a totally different vehicle ten years from now."
Love Affair. Ford, using technology bought from West Germany's Audi-NSU-Wankel, is also extensively testing the Wankel. Chrysler officials are the least enthusiastic about a rotary revolution. Engineering Vice President Alan Loofbourrow recently predicted that the Wankel "will turn out to be one of the most unbelievable fantasies ever to hit the world auto industry." Few other auto executives would go nearly that far; almost all insist that they must still cross several important bridges—especially the higher fuel consumption problem—before putting a rotary engine into mass production.
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 out of it.
* Last week Assistant Interior Secretary Hollis M. Dole predicted that ordinary auto gasoline may become "in tight supply in certain sections of the country by late summer of this year."