Looking at that other rotary post has me thinking....
How about a rotary in a FWD car? (Say, a VW Golf...)
BTW, for a street car...
Has it been done?
Or have I been sniffing too much exhaust...?
This is the only one i have ever known,
Wikipedia said: The 13A was designed especially for front wheel drive applications. It had two 655 cc rotors for a total of 1310 cc. This was the only production Mazda Wankel with different rotor dimensions: Radius was 120 mm (4.7 in) and offset was 17.5 mm (0.7 in), but depth remained the same as the 10A at 60 mm (2.4 in). Another major difference from the previous engines was the integrated water-cooled oil cooler. The 13A was used only in the 1969–1972 R130 Luce, where it produced 126 hp (94 kW) and 172 Nm (126 ft·lbf). This was the end of the line for this engine design: the next Luce was rear wheel drive and Mazda never again made a front wheel drive rotary vehicle. Applications: 1970–1972 Mazda R130
In reply to JtspellS:
Ok, so Mazda did it at one time...
But just as a what if...
FWD Rotary in a Golf as a play toy street car.
Any reason not to?
No reason I can think of. There's some guy out there with a Fiat X 1/9 powered by a transverse rotary and also a guy from, IIRC, Belgium who used to post on rx7club.com had a mid engine French car (the name started with an M) with a rotary. He used a Toyota transaxle, made his own adapter plate, you name it. It was some kind of cool car.
EDIT: based on the two swaps mentioned above the toughest thing about transversing a rotary is that the CV axle behind the engine runs about where the exhaust ports come out. The engine has to be indexed properly on the transaxle for max clearance, in the two instances I mentioned the engine was rotated about 10 degrees from horizontal to get enough clearance.
Rotary Civic
Rotary Mini
Found the archived rx7club thread where the guy in Belgium did a swap in something called a Matra Murena. http://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=521329
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