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In Japanese, the company's name has always been
pronounced and spelled as "Matsuda", the name of the founder. Television ads for
Mazda automobiles in the United States use a pronunciation where the initial
vowel sound is the 'a' in "father", while Canadian Mazda advertisements
pronounce the company's name with the initial "a" sound of the word "has". Mazda
began as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd, founded in Japan in 1920. Toyo Cork Kogyo
renamed itself to Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd. in 1927. Toyo Kogyo moved from
manufacturing machine tools to vehicles, with the introduction of the Mazda-Go
in 1931. The company formally adopted the Mazda name in 1984, though every
automobile sold from the beginning bore that name. The Mazda R360 was introduced
in 1960, followed by the Mazda Carol in 1962
Beginning in the 1960s, Mazda put a major engineering effort into development of
the Wankel rotary engine as a way of differentiating themselves from other
Japanese auto companies. Both piston-powered and rotary-powered models made
their way around the world. The R100 and the famed RX series (RX-2, RX-3, and
RX-4) led the company's export efforts.
During 1970, Mazda formally entered the North American market (Mazda North
American Operations) and was very successful there, going so far as to create
the Mazda Rotary Pickup (based on the conventional piston-powered B-Series
model) solely for North American buyers. To this day, Mazda remains the only
automaker to have produced a Wankel-powered pickup truck. Additionally, they are
also the only marque to have ever offered a rotary-powered bus (the Mazda
Parkway, offered only in Japan) or station wagon (within the RX-3 line).
Mazda's rotary success continued until the onset of the 1973 oil crisis. Not
wishing to abandon the rotary engine entirely, Mazda refocused their efforts and
made it a choice for the sporting motorist rather than a mainstream powerplant.
This switch in focus also resulted in the development of another lightweight
sports car, the piston-powered Mazda Roadster (perhaps better known by its
worldwide names as the MX-5 or Miata), inspired by the concept 'jinba ittai'.
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After the war, Wankel established the Technical Institute of Engineering Study
(TES) and continued his work on the research and development of the rotary
engine and the rotary compressor for commercial use.
One prominent motorcycle manufacturer, NSU, showed a strong interest in Wankel's
research. It was not long before Wankel and NSU created a partnership for the
development of the rotary engine. In 1957, Wankel and NSU completed a prototype
of the type DKM rotary engine, which combined a cocoon-shaped rotor housing with
a triangular rotor.
The DKM proved that the rotary engine was not just a dream. The structure,
however, was complicated because the trochoid rotor housing itself rotated,
making this type of rotary engine impractical. Although it had a rather
complicated cooling system that included a water-cooled housing with an
oil-cooled rotor, this new KKM was the forerunner of the modern Wankel rotary
engine. In November 1959, NSU officially announced the completion of the Wankel
rotary engine. Mazda's president, Tsuneji Matsuda, immediately recognized the
great potential of the rotary engine, and personally began direct negotiations
with NSU. The technical study group obtained a prototype of an NSU-built 400cc
single-rotor rotary engine and related drawings, and learned of the "chatter
mark" problem. It remained a problem even inside NSU.
In November 1961, while it was testing the
NSU-built rotary engine, Mazda produced its own prototype, an engine
independently designed in-house. Find more information, news and reviews
on Mazda Cars on KBB.com