The Covid-19 pandemic may have even led to the cancellation of several meetings and salons, however it did not prevent a peculiar meeting dedicated to the Wankel engines.
Held in Japan, this meeting has only one rule: the cars present must be equipped with the famous engine patented by Felix Wankel in 1929.
Thanks to YouTuber Noriyaro, in this video we can see this meeting more closely and confirm what we expected: most of the cars present belong to a single brand: Mazda.
This is due to two very simple factors which are the geographic location of the event and, of course, Mazda's long association with Wankel engines. Thus, we have models like the Mazda RX-3, RX-7, RX-8 and even a Mazda 767B, the predecessor of the 787B — the only Wankel to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in 1991 — was present with the marks to “sponsor” the event with the presence of this copy.
Mazda majority, but there are exceptions
Despite the vast majority of Mazdas at this event — both with completely standard models as well as others heavily modified — not only Japanese models take place at this meeting dedicated to Wankel engines.
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Among the non-Japanese models present there, the rarest is perhaps even the Citroën GS Birotor, a model of which few copies were sold and which the French brand repurchased to destroy so as not to have to deal with the future supply of parts.
In addition to this rare Frenchman, the meeting was also attended by a Caterham that received a Wankel engine and even a prototype created for the 1996 edition of the Tokyo Auto Salon.
Update November 5, 2020, 3:05 pm — The article referred to the competition prototype as a 787B, when it's actually a 767B, so we've corrected the text accordingly.