Hey, Communism Worked In Theory Too.

Every 5 years or so, it seems the future is revealed to us. The newest, greatest technology that will save the future of the automobile has come around, it's time is now, and it will undoubtedly be the greatest thing that has ever happened to the car industry.  Sometimes it's right - look at concepts like direct injection, turbocharging, variable valve timing, hybrids, clean diesels, etc - and sometimes it's an epic flop.  While ideas that stick are cool, what I find more interesting are the ideas that come and go, and no one really remembers them.  Here are a few of my favorites.

1) The Wankel Rotary Engine

Once upon a time, it was thought that the future of internal combustion engines was a three-sided pregnant spinning dorito called the Wankel.  Invented by Dr. Felix Wankel in the mid 1950's, the first working prototype was operating in 1957, and it was first shown to the press in 1960.  Intended as a replacement for reciprocating piston engines, the Wankel was unusual but it's design, on paper, was not without merits.

Primarily, piston engines create power every 1 stroke out of four.  The wankel would be creating power three times every revolution of a single rotor tip.  It's odd design is confusing at first, until you notice the rotor is mounted on an offset "eccentric shaft" and it travels in a sort of wobbly circle, with the tips always sealing on the chambers.  The ports would pull in air and fuel at the point with greatest area in the rotor's travel, compress it down the point with the smallest volume, and then ignite it - and with three rotors, that was three power cycles for every revolution.

So it had higher "power density" as well as considerably smoother operations.  While the piston engine would shove a piston down, stop it, make it reverse direction, and shove it back up ad infinitum, the Wankel simply spun in a circle.  This uncanny smoothness was a characteristic of the rotary that it's main supporter, Mazda, was proud to point out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0KtK7cy6A0

"The piston engine goes boing, boing, boing... but the Mazda goes Hmmmm..." Yeah, right.

The Wankel made it's production car debut in two different cars in the same year: 1967.  One was the Ro80, an aerodynamic four-door sedan produced by then-prominent German maker NSU.  The other, a sleek sports coupe called the Cosmo, by an up-and-coming Japanese brand based in Nagasaki, called Mazda.  You know how this turned out.

The Ro80 shone very bright, very briefly, for NSU.  The car debuted to rave reviews and universal admiration - it was the car of the future, here today.  With aerodynamic, handsome styling that was years ahead of the blocky creations competitors like Mercedes-Benz and BMW were making, the NSU didn't even need to have a futuristic powertrain to be admired.  It didn't hurt that it had a brand-new kind of engine attached to an unusual (3-speed vacuum-assisted semi-automatic) transmission, either.  The Ro80 used a two-rotor (495x2cc) wankel good for 113bhp, which was a lot for a compact sedan back then.  There were four-wheel disc brakes (inboard in front), four-wheel-independent suspension, and rack-and-pinion power steering.  The CoD (coefficient of drag) of .355 made the Ro80 one of the slipperiest cars of it's day, which was a large inspiration for the later Audi 5000 that became so popular.

With such advanced design crammed into one package, it was bound to go south somewhere, and it did.  The Ro80's unique engine used apex seals on the rotors made of the same material as the rotor, which meant they had sealing problems at cold and premature seal wear usually sidelined original engines by 30,000 miles, sometimes only 15,000.  Later revisions changed the seal material to eliminate the problem, but it was too late - the Ro80's name was ruined on the European market, and the cars quickly lost most all their value.  Repairing the engines under the warranty incurred great cost on NSU, who eventually folded a few years later.

Japanese company Mazda tried the Wankel to a far greater degree, actually achieving some commercial success with it back when the price of gas was irrelevant.  They too debuted a rotary powered car in 1967, the hand-built Cosmo Coupe.  With styling somewhere between a 911 and an E-Type, it was one of the first Japanese cars to really make a stylistic statement of any sort - well before anyone had heard of a Datsun 240Z.    It also used a twin-rotor Wankel engine fed by a Hitachi carb.  With 982cc's of displacement, it produced a respectable 110 horsepower - 128 in later versions.  With a four-speed manual, the Cosmo could top out at 115 miles an hour, which was amazing for a 1.0L car in it's day.

Mazda later went on to put Rotary engines in just about everything - coupes, sports cars, pickup trucks, even the Mazda Parkway Rotary powered bus(!)  They found great success in the RX-3 and RX-7 sports cars, which were renowned for their light weight, balance, and simplicity.

Other manufacturers dabbled with the Wankel.  Citroen made a rotary version of it's GS hatchback, although with a price tag greater than the larger, more comfortable DS and remarkably bad fuel efficiency during the first oil crisis in the 70's, it didn't exactly sell well: a total of 847 units were made in 1973, and Citroen later recalled and crushed all of them because they didn't want to stock replacement parts.

Mercedes-Benz and GM also made some prototypes in the 70's with rotary power, and Mercedes' C111 went on to set some endurance records, but they never really went anywhere.

The only vehicle currently for sale with a rotary is the Mazda RX-8, which has been basically unchanged since it's introduction in 2003.  It's headed for the grave, a victim of upcoming emissions regulations it has no hope of meeting.  And that's basically what killed the rotary: poor fuel mileage, premature wear in early models tainting the engine's reputation, and a tendency to run filthy-rich leaves it as more of a technical oddity than a viable powerplant.  Of course, just as Mazda is about to phase out the only rotary-powered car in the world, Audi has developed an extended-range electric vehicle based on the A1 which uses, yup you guessed it, a rotary engine as the range-extender.  Maybe some people never learn - Mazda says they're hard at work on a new Rotary which will pass emissions.  We'll see.

2) Digital Dashboards

It seems a major bragging point of a lot of cars in the 1980's was a digital dashboard.  This was a time when computers were just coming into the mainstream, and the general assumption was that digital > analog.  Talk about an engineering dead-end, here.  How many cars do you see with digital rev counters these days?  Basically none.  But back in the 80's, a "digidash" was an (additional cost) option on almost every car out there.  From Audi Quattro to Datsun Z car, you could have a cheesy digital dashboard barking commands at you no matter your budget.  And while the design was different fr0m car to car, they all had one thing in common: they were terrible.

Take the digidash in Nissan's whizz-bang 300ZX (Z31.)  You could get a 300ZX with regular analog gauges, two nice, fat round speedometer and tachometer gauges next to each other.  Or you could spend more money and get this garbage:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36V_QenRnCA

"You know what the world really needs?  A dual-axis tachometer that no one can read."  Hey, some one must've said it.  The horizontal axis showed rpm, and the vertical axis showed throttle input - or was it power output?  I'm not really sure.  Then there was the digital speedometer, which was hard to read - when it was working, which was infrequently.  Of course, the gauges would wash out in direct sunlight, so you couldn't see anything.  Which isn't a problem you had in cars with, you know, real gauges.

3) Freewheeling

Ever ridden a bicycle?  Or, more specifically, a bicycle with gears?  You'll notice a basic difference between it and a car.  When you stop pedaling a bike, it disconnects the crank from the gears, so it doesn't spin your little legs to death while you whizz down a hill.  This is necessary to not "over-rev" your legs - the force of gravity pulling the wheels is greater than the power you're making with your legs, so rather than your legs turning the crank, the crank turns your legs.  Freewheeling prevents your bike from breaking your knees.

At this point, you're probably saying "...what?  When did cars have free-wheeling?"  Well, when they were two-strokes, that's when.  Perhaps this isn't so much a dead-end as it is obsolete (two-stroke engines are dying out due to emissions regulations on ATV's and PWC's, which have much more lax requirements for emissions than cars), but it's interesting to note that some cars used to have this.  The reason is pretty simple: a two-stroke engine injects oil with its gas to keep everything lubricated.  If the transmission didn't disconnect from the flywheel when you let off the gas, gravity would speed the engine up (as there's no compression braking on an engine with no valves!) past the effective fuel delivery rate, also starving the engine of oil and causing it to seize and blow up violently.  This is why Saabs had freewheeling for a long time; the first Saab automobiles were powered by 2 and 3 cylinder 2-stroke engines.  Saab kept freewheeling on board even after the 96 switched to four-stroke power (the V4 Ford Taunus engine) and even into early Saab 99's with the Triumph-derived slant four, as an aid to fuel economy.  Government regulations banning freewheeling in cars relegated this device to bicycles only in the 70's.

4) "Emissions" Valves.

In the time period between the rise of emissions regulations and the adoption of the catalytic converter as the standard method of meeting them, some manufacturers got very creative with ways to meet smog requirements of new vehicles with old engine designs.  Two of them are Honda and Mitsubishi.

Honda's CVCC system came about shortly after the US started to switch from leaded to unleaded gasoline.  CVCC was an acronym which stood for "Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion."  It was a lean-burn engine designed to run on leaded or unleaded gasoline, and meet then-current emissions regulations without a catalytic converter or fuel injection.  For the time, it was pretty damn clever: the CVCC had two primary valves (Intake, Exhaust) along with a third auxiliary intake valve which filled an area near the spark plug.  The auxiliary valve pulled in a rich fuel/air mixture, while the regular intake valve that pulled air/fuel into the cylinder was lean - the two areas were seperated by a perforated plate.  When the rich mixture was ignited by the spark plug, the flame front would pass through the perforated plate and ignite the lean mixture in the cylinder, thus making it effectively a lean-burn motor.  It ran stable but reduced Carbon Monoxide and Hydrocarbon emissions without the need for expensive external equipment, high-test unleaded gas, or fuel injection.

Mitsubishi's MCA-Jet system used a similar system, albeit designed to be less integrated.  An auxiliary intake valve provided a swirl to the intake charge, allowing a leaner fuel/air mixture, again for emissions reasons.  Since the auxiliary valve simply threaded into a hole in the cylinder head, these MCA-Jet motors (like the 4G54 used in the Starion/Conquest) were prone to cracked heads, when they were overtightened or when the head overheated.

Auxiliary intake valve setups eventually were replaced with more reliable and less complicated and problematic catalytic converters, and variable valve timing systems and fuel injection allowed for adjustable fuel/air ratios, making these systems obsolete.  Still, an interesting solution to a problem using available technology!

5) Four-Wheel-Steering

Ugh.  Let's talk about needless complication for a minute.  Case in point: the 1991 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4.  How do you make a small 2+2 coupe weigh almost two tons?  Well, when it includes the following: 3.0L V6, twin-cam four valve heads, twin turbochargers, twin intercoolers, five-speed manual, four-wheel-drive with transfer case and 3 differentials, active aerodynamics, ABS, "variable tone" exhaust system, electronically controlled variable dampers, and four-wheel-steering.  Yikes.  The VR-4 sounded like the Swiss Army Knife of sports cars, but it ended up being an overweight, understeering pig of a GT that couldn't keep up with purebreds like the Corvette, RX-7, 300ZX Twin Turbo, etc in anything but a straight line.  Preferably from a dead stop when it's raining.

So what about four-wheel-steering?  Well, for a while it seemed like it was the "next big thing" in suspension and handling design.  In theory, it should've been great.  At low speeds the rear wheels would turn the opposite direction of the fronts to reduce the turning circle.  At higher speeds they turned (to a small degree) in phase with the fronts to aid stability.  It ended up leading to twitchy handling and headaches with eventual failure.  Still, a lot of makers bit on the whole 4WS thing: Honda, Mazda, Nissan/Infiniti, BMW, Renault, Subaru, and Toyota all offered cars with four-wheel-steering.  Recently, GM found some market acceptance by offering it on quarter-ton and heavier pickups to tighten the turning circle, but again reliability issues and a low take rate because of the added expense killed the option.  Currently, Infiniti still offers 4WS on the G and M models, and most people agree it makes the car twitchy and unpredictable in the bends.  Lesson: let's let the front wheels do the steering.  Like they always have.

6) Pistons of any shape besides round.

Ok, there's really only one example that comes to mind here: Honda's bizarre NR 750 homologation bike.  The NR750 was a road-going development of the NR500 race bike, and instead of circles, it's pistons were elliptical ovals.  Yes, you read that right.  The elongated design allowed for two things: narrower packaging, and the ability to pack a whole ton of valves on each cylinder.  8 valves, in fact - giving Honda a 32 valve V4 engine.  The obvious benefit being a larger amount of fuel and air into each cylinder than with a four-valve setup.

The obvious downside, of course, was that the pistons never sealed quite right.  Also, when the NR750 was new in the early '90's, it cost north of $50,000 and there were only 300 made, but still.  Oval Pistons. Honda, you win at this game.

Got any other head-scratching why-tech engineering dead ends to share with us?  Drop a line in the comments and us know!