In The 1980s, Mazda Made The Only Rotary Turbo Sedans In The World

Let’s rewind the clock back to the 1980s and see what Mazda’s all about. Wow, the clock is digital. Other than moving towards front-wheel drive with the newly launched Familia/323/GLC and producing small trucks for Ford, Mazda was still busy trying to make the rotary revolution happen. The first-generation RX-7 had been launched a couple of years earlier, and if there’s one car that will be remembered for its rotary powerplant, in a positive way, it’s the RX-7 sports car that spanned three generations. The 1978 SA-generation RX-7 continued where the RX-3 coupe had left off.

As well as coupes, Mazda was adamant about putting rotary engines into sedans from the 1970s onwards. The RX-3 was offered in sedan form, alongside the 616/Capella’s rotary-engined versions, the larger and plusher Luce and Cosmo, and the notorious Roadpacer, which combined a dinky 1.3-liter, 135-horsepower rotary engine with a full-size Holden Premier body from Australia. The Roadpacer went nowhere, both figuratively and literally, but it used enormous amounts of fuel trying to shift itself. It was soon buried, but Mazda wasn’t done with rear-wheel-drive rotary sedans. Thankfully, turbocharging was there to help things along.

The mid-1970s Luce and Cosmo, both heavier and larger than their predecessors, were styled with a certain amount of American influence. In 1981, those cars were phased out in favor of a new, sharp, 1980s styling approach which cut through malaisey chrome curves like a blade. Only the old wagon remained in production for the rest of the decade.

Sharper Image

The hardtop sedan Luce and Cosmo were easy to differentiate visually from their export version Mazda 929 siblings: the 929, sold in Europe, got a wide grille and narrow headlights, the Luce and Cosmo got a narrow grille and wide headlights – though you could also get a Luce with a regular 929-style roof and wide grille, as seen in the above shot.

You can also see how much the roof shape changed between versions, as the hardtop sedan lost the large windows on the C-pillar, but gained a wraparound rear screen.

The Luce nameplate was directed towards luxury, so it was only affixed to sedans. Mazda had introduced a Cosmo coupe in the late ’60s, so the HB coupes were all called Cosmo, even if they didn’t really carry any inspiration from the bullet-shaped ’60s coupe that had a bit of 1955 Thunderbird about it. The double-wide pop-ups on the HB Cosmo were some of the widest in the business, and initially, you could get them on both the sedan and the coupe. That’s almost Buick Skyhawk stuff.

I could get lost in the above press photo for hours, but I bet the studio smelled of cigarettes. Or how do you think they recreated the smoke in the shot below?

The Luce and Cosmo were available with piston engines, and the 929 only with them, but especially the 1981-1989 HB Cosmo sedan was a power plant freak show: you could get three inline fours, three rotaries, and a 2.2-liter diesel four. It remains the only car in history to offer an engine palette like that. The 160-hp Cosmo Rotary Turbo coupe was the fastest production car in Japan at the time, until the R30 Skyline RS came along.

Only V6 engines were missing, but the later HC generation took care of that. Sadly, by then, no diesels were offered anymore.

The turbo rotary engines were the only ones of their kind to go in a four-door sedan, which guarantees the Luce and Cosmo a place in automotive history.

For the HB generation Cosmo, Mazda’s marketing department literally went for a Playboy image: the car’s ads, shot in New York with a BIG RUN tagline, featured Playboy bunnies and a nightclub schlager soundtrack whose name translates to “The Blooming Man.” I have the Kazuhiro Nishimatsu single on vinyl, as it popped up on Discogs a while ago.

More Rotary Turbos

And the 1986 HC platform was again larger, with bigger engines, looking like it borrowed a few lines from the Mercedes-Benz W126. While regular four-bangers were still offered, the 1.3-liter rotary turbo was supplemented with a choice of 3.0-liter V6, the same unit as in the export 929.

The HB Luce had bowed out in 1986, but the HB Cosmo soldiered on ‘til 1990, to be replaced with the final production appearance of the Cosmo nameplate so far: the weird and wonderful Eunos Cosmo coupe with a choice of twin or triple rotor engines.

The larger of those was a two-liter, which is immense for a rotary, and it produced the official Gran Turismo era power figure of 280PS/275hp/206kW, like every other hot JDM car of the era.

Mazda had planned to export the ’90s Cosmo as an Amati, but the asset bubble bursting put an end to that, as well as the entire Amati brand. Still, Mazda sold the 1986 929s in the United States as well as its 1991 successor, until that car was replaced in the States by the Mazda Millenia, another Amati remnant.

You Can Get One

1980s and 1990s Luces and Cosmos have largely remained home-market cars, only exported second-hand, but they sometimes appear for sale in the West.

Right now, there’s a wonderful 1986 Cosmo Rotary Turbo Limited on Bring A Trailer, located in the Netherlands. The auction has six days left, with just a couple of bids in.

The car has only done 56,000 miles in 40 years, and it’s the coveted combination of a rotary turbo engine and manual gearbox. It says TURBO or ROTARY TURBO in several places.

For anyone who’s fascinated with ‘80s Japanese cars on the detail level, the Cosmo sedan is a dream: there’s woodgrain, lace seat covers in the usual JDM style, a vertical-load cassette deck from Mitsubishi together with an equalizer, an onboard “Touring Computer,” graphic gauges done in the same style as on S10/Blazers, and rotating displays for turbo boost and coolant temperature.

Only the headlights and indicators get a stalk, as cruise control (called SPEED CONTROL) is controlled with buttons on the dash, as are the windshield wipers.

There’s a separate small display on the left side of the steering column with more warning lights and a graphic for the electronically adjustable suspension. Underneath that is the aftermarket HKS Turbo Timer, which can prove handy on a 1980s turbo car with an unconventional powertrain.

The door windows are frameless, because of course they are. The two-tone paint is done in the same exact ‘80s style as on a Prelude or a Nissan Sunny: dark grey on top, silver on the lower panels, as if it were imitating a low-poly shark. The rear window has a wiper, which is another JDM sedan hallmark. The current owner has had the car since 2024 and performed necessary maintenance from fluids to brakes, filters to spark plugs.

Coupe versions of cars are usually the cooler ones by far, but this is a sedan worth dreaming about, if you’re into this kind of thing. A few of the same HB generation 929s have survived in Europe, sedans and coupes, and while they are certainly cool as any old sedan of the time would be by now, the Cosmo’s sharper hardtop sedan looks make it stand out. The HB and HC generation Luce and Cosmo are the only production rotary turbo sedans, and while the world mostly missed out on them when they were new, it’s great to think that enthusiasts outside Japan now have access to them.

All images and top graphic: Mazda unless otherwise noted