Normally I don’t take notice the passing of a long-time auto executive, but I’ll make an exception with the news of the recent death of Kenichi Yamamoto. He once served as president and chairman of Mazda, but he became most famous by being head of the team of engineers that perfected the rotary engine for […]

I should feel lucky. I’ve owned several VWs over the years, but never considered a diesel option. Not that I had any prejudice against a different kind of engine — I owned one of Mazdas original rotary engine cars in the 1970s — but the value proposition just didn’t make much sense to me. Here’s why: […]

I understand the need for wanting something now, and it’s not just an attractive fellow member of our species. Back in the late 1960s, I took a test drive in an innovative motor vehicle that masqueraded as a simple compact car. It was the Mazda R100, the first mass-produced car that contained the Wankel Rotary […]

To put things into perspective, don’t forget that a millisecond is a thousandth of a second. It takes 300 to 400 milliseconds for your eye to blink, and I don’t expect you can measure it on your stop watch. Back in the 1970s, I drove a mundane-looking but innovative car, a Mazda RX2, which featured […]