[Viffermike]

IF Mazda goes back to producing an RX, it really needs to re-visit the spirit of the original. That car was very comparable to the Miata: small, light, relatively simple, easily track-able. It didn't need its long-ish hood (That was more of a styling response to the original cheap sports car, the Datsun 280z, than a packaging necessity for the Wankel powerplant), and the engine itself was about the size of a mini-fridge.

The issues with them is oil consumption (and, thus, emissions) and a much bigger one: cooling. A three-rotor Wankel is a design impracticality for a production car and just isn't practical for stop-and-go driving because it's virtually impossible to keep the center rotor cool. A Wankel engine only has four moving parts; reliability isn't really the issue (That's also why older RX-7s are very popular track cars and SCCA race cars); it's power production and reasonable operating temperatures ... which is another reason to make a new RX a smaller, lighter car in which gobs of power are not really needed.