Comment by bitexploder
5 years ago
[*] more reliable in theory. Mazda RX8 and rotary engines are famous for being a bit maintenance heavy and unreliable.
The amount of engineering and brain power that has gone into making common ICE engines in cars in wide deployment reliable is staggering.
I've own an RX8 maintenance came down to adding oil every few fill ups, and changing spark plugs every 10k miles. If you treat the engine correctly, the will easily get to 100k miles, if you drive the engine incorrectly (run at low RPM), or run low on oil things won't last long. The car is a sports car and won't get you worry free 200,000 miles like Accord or Camry. Even the S2000 had similar oil usage.
Talking to the dealers I took the car too, many of the issues with related to people who didn't warm engine up, or baby the engine below 3,000 rpms causing carbon build up.
Agreed on automotive rotary. It's not in the same spirit as the gas turbine and others.