Even if Felix Wankel himself were to rise up from the earth and present a personal lecture to us on the intricacies of the rotary engine, we still wouldn't understand how this thing works. "Oh yes, now we understand. There are no pistons. Got it. We just have one question, Dr. Wankel: Where are the pistons?"
But if there's one thing we know-other than how to put a cover sheet on our TPS reports-it's the fervent enthusiasm for the rotary engine, and more specifically, the RX-7. It's been more than a few years since the RX-7 was unceremoniously yanked from our shores and yet the fifth annual SevenStock event was stronger than ever, celebrating all things rotary.
SevenStock is the brainchild of the folks at RotaryNews.com and for the past two years, Mazda has stepped up offering its Irvine, California R&D facility as an event location.
The magnitude of this party is not lost on Mazda North America President Charlie Hughes as he has attended the 'Stock for the last two years. At SevenStock 4, Takaharu "Koby" Kobayakawa rocked the house. Koby was on Mazda's original rotary engine development team and he is widely acknowledged as the grandfather of the third-gen RX-7. Koby had such a blast that he came back to do it all over again with Kazuo Takada, another one of Mazda's early rotary engine pioneers.
Kobayakawa-san and Takada-san were just two of the visionaries who made Dr. Wankel's vision a practical reality. For this, we give them our patented two-snaps-up-in-a-Z-formation.