We’ve covered a lot of the early rotary Mazda history, especially the racing history of the Cosmo 110S, Familia Coupe, RX2 Capella and RX3 Savanna GT. It would lead you to believe that Mazda rotaries were all about performance and racing, but in 1975 Mazda took a sharp left turn with the RX-5 (or Cosmo as it was called in Japan).
The RX5 debuted with very Americanised, bloated chrome laden styling, very much like a Japanese Olds Cutlass or Chevy Monte Carlo. In the USA, the muscle car era petered out in the early 70s as all of the old muscle nameplates like the Charger and Mustang were weighed down with power sapping pollution controls and greater weight from customer demands for more “personal luxury”…to the point where former big-cube hero cars were reduced to chrome laden gin palaces for the disco generation that could barely wheeze across the quarter mile in 19 seconds. And so Mazda followed suit with the RX5.
The irony is, the RX5 sold very poorly in the USA (in fact it sold badly in all western markets) but the one market where it was a certified smash hit was Japan.
