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Old 01-11-2007, 05:47 PM   #3
eightballsidepocke
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Re: 1970's concept: Rotary powered Corvette

Sadly, GM's killing of it's rotary engine project, dealt a death blow to American Motors Corporation(AMC). AMC was developing the Pacer as a rotary engined vehicle of futuristic looks, and had a working agreement with G.M. to put the G.M. rotary in the Pacer. When G.M. killed the project, AMC had to to some very last-minute underhood redesigns to shoe-horn in their inline OHV 258 Cid six, and later the optional 304 Cid V8 AMC powerplant.

Sometimes I've thought in retrospect that G.M. really set-up AMC in a calculated way to kill them as the number 4 U.S. vehicle maker. Inevitably, AMC slid downhill afterwards, doing a desperate merger with France's Renault, and then the subsequent watering-down of their car line with Renault designed cars utilizing badge-engineering to pass as AMC cars. AMC's last gasp was their Eagle Premier, which was killed by Chrysler when Chrysler went for AMC's Juggler and bought them out to just get AMC's very successful Jeep division. The Eagle Premier did get sold for a short time through Chrysler Eagle dealers, and also as a badge engineered Dodge Monaco. It was a fairly sound car that AMC had put together, but it was too little too late.

To this day, I've regretted GM's killing of the rotary project, as it would have distinguished the Corvette line in a very special way. Besides that, the rotary would probably have received much more R&R by now and who know's what it might have evolved into as a vehicular powerplant in the 21 century. Only Mazda has stayed with the rotary engine for powering vehicles. With the added R&R resources of G.M., I think there could have been some monumental break throughs by now for this type of engine, in the area of fuel economy, oil consumption, and emissions controls.
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