I never knew about the Suzuki RE 5 until today!

[Laverda Dave]

Mazda are still at it. Twin rotor rotary hybrid + carbon capture.

 Mazda’s done it again: the Vision X-Coupe is a 503bhp rotary-engined concept | Top Gear https://share.google/VXGVingbPbSg7Ew6A

Nice looking concept Tim. I do like Mazda's and one of the only companies to continue with big block ICE's rather then relying on small 1 litre or less three cylinder engines with a turbo attached to give the same power with a lot less reliability.

Nigel, the sound of that race Mazda, absolute bliss and up there with the V6 Laverda👍

[Johnny4428]

Interesting about the rotary engines. There was even one found its way to the Orkney isles back in the day, not sure whatever came of it. There was quite a few R0 80’s around here as we had a local dealer.
Even although we were quite often asked if we Electricity! 😳😂🤣

[Laverda Dave]

I was going to mention the Van Veen OCR too Dave  didn't realise that was the Citröen derived motor though.

There was a Citröen GS prototype rotary lurking in the corner of a garage recently, I think it was on Drew Pritchard car program when he went to by a NSU RO80 ... the owner noted that it was an "escaped" development vehicle.

You couldn't guess it was a car engine Nigel, they fitted a number of fancy covers over the engine to disguise it's origin's. I remember seeing this bike in a weekly magazine called 'On Two Wheels' back in the mid 70’s when I was a young teenager.
Van Veen rose from the dead a few years ago and made a few more OCR's from spares laying around, they were of course, reassuringly expensive!

[Oddjob]

My missus used to work for Mazda and I considered buying an RX8 until the workshop guys told me how much oil the engine used. Around a pint a week with my mileages back then. Oil ain’t cheap these days and its mpg was pretty low as well. I bought a Mazda 3 instead.

[Rozabikes Tim]

Just looking at an image of the Van Veen. A bit nicer looking than the Suzuki but that ain't hard

I really struggle with the looks of bikes with more unusual engines than the normal 4 & 2 strokes we know. Don't want to be a luddite but he rotary and latterly electric motors just look bulky, heavy and clumsy to me.  Or is it just me? 😳

[K2-K6]

Mazda are still at it. Twin rotor rotary hybrid + carbon capture.

 Mazda’s done it again: the Vision X-Coupe is a 503bhp rotary-engined concept | Top Gear https://share.google/VXGVingbPbSg7Ew6A

Nice looking concept Tim. I do like Mazda's and one of the only companies to continue with big block ICE's rather then relying on small 1 litre or less three cylinder engines with a turbo attached to give the same power with a lot less reliability.

Nigel, the sound of that race Mazda, absolute bliss and up there with the V6 Laverda👍

It would be fantastic if that V6 had got into more of a production run wouldn't it Dave 

The rotary of course is a triple fire for each revolution of the trichiod component, geared to the crank though to give that equivalency calculation for its capacity. 

All version and derivatives of the firing 3 just sound so good though, don't they.

That 767b Mazda effectively pulsing as a 24 cylinder four stroke with its 4 rotors at 3 pulses for every rotor revolution (two stroke cycles) to give that unearthly guttural howl 

[Athame57]

Interesting about the rotary engines. There was even one found its way to the Orkney isles back in the day, not sure whatever came of it. There was quite a few R0 80’s around here as we had a local dealer.

Did they have that greeting German owners of NSU Ro 80's had when they encountered each other, where they would should three, four, five or whatever amount fingers to represent how many engines they have got through? 

[Johnny4428]

Not sure about engines but there was at least 2 that required a bit of panel beating and maybe a few panels when they ended up in fields.😜 Ah, those country dances they were great!😂

[AshimotoK0]

Don't know how true this is but my mate is a pretty straightforward no BS chap. In the late 70's he used to have Suzuki's delivered in the crates to his home workshop by Heron Suzuki to assemble for a dealer friend. The delivery guy dropped the crated bikes off for assembly  but said he had a couple of RE5's on board that he was instructed to take for disposal. He said to my mate if he wanted to bung him a couple of hundred quid (can't remember the exact figure) he could take one no questions asked. My mate never took him up on it but kind of regretted it afterwards.

I remember I guy at work (not somebody I really knew well ... just saw him in the car park where I parked my 400/4) buying an RE5 and it quickly developed serious problems so he was loaned a GT750 Kettle, whilst it was away being fixed. Never saw that RE5 again and the guy always turned up on a GT750 so I guess he never got the RE5 back again, and did a deal on the GT750

[Johnny4428]

That’s interesting Ash, I read something about the CBX1000 prototypes too that were supposed to be disposed of, were they?? Can’t remember where I read it, maybe on here even.