The is an automobile produced by Mazda from 1967 to 1995. During its production run, the Cosmo served as a "halo" vehicle for Mazda, with the first Cosmo successfully launching the Mazda Wankel engine. The final generation of the Cosmo served as Mazda's flagship vehicle in Japan, sold as the Eunos Cosmo through its luxury Eunos division in Japan.

Mazda decided on the name "cosmo", reflecting international cultural fascination with the Space Race. The company wanted to showcase the Mazda Wankel engine as forward-thinking, with focus on future developments and technology.

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Series L10A/L10B (1967–1972)

The first Mazda to bear the Cosmo name (called the 110S on models intended for export) was (along with the NSU Ro80) one of the first production cars to feature a 2-rotor Wankel engine. A prototype was presented at the 1964 Tokyo Motor Show, one month before the 1964 Summer Olympics, and after the introduction of the NSU Spider at the Frankfurt Motor Show; 80 pre-production Cosmos were produced for the Mazda test department (20) and for dealership testing (60) between 1965 and 1966. Full production began in May 1967 and lasted through 1972, though Cosmos were hand-built at a rate of approximately one per day, for a total of 1,176 (343 Series I cars and 833 Series II cars). The car was also featured in the show The Return of Ultraman.

Cosmos were built in five batches:

{|class=wikitable

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!Date

!Number

!Engine

!Description

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|align=right|1963||align=right|2||align=center|8A||prototype Cosmo

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|align=right|1964||align=right|1||align=center|10A||Tokyo Motor Show prototype

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|align=right|January 1965||align=right|80||align=center|0810||preproduction test cars

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|align=right|May 1967 – July 1968||align=right|343||align=center|0810||Series I

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|align=right|July 1968 – September 1972||align=right|833||align=center|0813||Series II

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Racing

In 1968, Mazda went racing with the Cosmo. They selected one of the most grueling tests in Europe to prove the reliability of the rotary engine, the 84-hour Marathon de la Route at the legendary Nürburgring circuit in Germany.

A 1970 Cosmo sports is currently, (September 2024), being fully restored by an English based Company called Yorkshire Car Restorations on YouTube. It has the original Wankel engine (10A) and original 5-speed gearbox. It has been fully stripped to bare metal and new re-fabricated parts and panels fitted, where necessary.

Series CD (1975–1981)

thumb|left|Mazda 121 L Landau coupé

The second generation CD Cosmo appeared in 1975 and lasted until 1981. It was known as the Cosmo AP (Anti-Pollution) in Japan, and sold internationally as the Mazda RX-5, though in some export markets its piston-powered counterpart was called the Mazda 121 (a name later applied to Mazda's subcompact model). The anti-pollution label reflected that the cars were able to meet the strict, 1976 Japanese emissions standards, thanks to the installation of a thermal reactor which kept hydrocarbon levels down.

left|thumb|Mazda Cosmo AP fastback rear view

left|thumb|Mazda 121 fastback

The CD Cosmo/RX-5 series was positioned as a personal luxury car, with a focus on comfort and high equipment levels rather than outright sportiness. When introduced, it had a fastback bodystyle with three side windows; the one just behind the B-pillar could be wound down. Inspired by the US market, in particular the 1970s era Lincoln Continental, a notchback coupé model called the Landau appeared in early 1977. In the United States, the Cosmo was replaced by the smaller, lighter, and sportier Mazda RX-7. Due to its poor sales as an export, the Series II version, built from 1979, was not exported and remained a Japanese domestic sale only. In Europe, the RX-5 saw very little competition in the rotary-engine equipped market, with the introduction of the short-lived Citroën GS Birotor, as well as any remaining NSU RO80 sedans.

The Cosmo was Mazda's largest rotary-powered coupé, based on the LA series Mazda Luce floor pan and mechanics, but slightly heavier due to body design and more luxurious appointments, including a five-link rear suspension and rear disc brakes. It was available with the 12A and 13B engines. This series Cosmo was joined by the short-lived Mazda Roadpacer, a large, heavy sedan powered only by a rotary engine.

While the powerful rotaries received most of the attention, with the 13B-engined version with a manual transmission being able to reach a top speed of , a piston-engined version was also on offer at the bottom of the range. The Cosmo 1800, used a 1769 cc (80 x 88 mm) inline-four SOHC engine that produces and . After Mazda noted a space for a more powerful piston-engined derivative, as rotary sales were slowing down because of their high fuel consumption, the bigger Cosmo 2000 with became available in March 1977.

The rotary engine had financial advantages to Japanese consumers in that the engine displacement remained below 1.5 liters, a significant determination when paying the Japanese annual road tax which kept the obligation affordable to most buyers, while having more power than traditional piston engines of the same official displacement.

Series HB (1981–1989)

The third generation HB Cosmo from September 1981 shared the Mazda HB chassis with its twin, the Mazda Luce. Some versions of both HB cars were sold overseas as the Mazda 929. The HB Cosmo was offered as a coupé (also called two door hardtop), as a sleek frameless window sedan (also called four door hardtop), and as a formal pillared sedan (known in Japan as saloon). The HB Cosmo is the 1st of two only cars in automotive history to offer a choice of gasoline and diesel piston engines, or rotary engines, and this was the last generation Cosmo to be exported. The design was smoothed out, rectilinear, with large glass surfaces and had a , the lowest in the world at the time of introduction. During 1984, the non-GT coupés also switched to fixed headlamps (domestic Japanese market; export markets differ in specifications and badge combinations).

When the FC series Mazda Savanna RX-7 was introduced in 1986 internationally, this series Cosmo coupé retained its top position as Mazda's largest rotary powered personal luxury car, with a comfortable backseat, trunk, and every luxury amenity available, while adopting the retractable headlights from the RX-7.

Mazda offered three different rotary engines for the HB series. These are the 12A-6PI (for "six-port induction"), 12A-turbo, and the 13B-RESI, with the 12AT version being the first fuel injected rotary engine from a late 1982 introduction. The 13B-RESI came online for the series-2 in 1984 and was only available with a JATCO 4-speed automatic transmission. The 1982 12A-turbo Cosmo coupé was officially the fastest production car in Japan until being overtaken by the FJ20ET-powered R30 Skyline RS. Due to durability issues, the turbo did not benefit from the six-port induction used on the naturally aspirated 12A-SPI variant, a system which lowered emissions, sound levels, and fuel consumption while also increasing power.

thumb|left|Mazda 20B-REW three rotor engine

Two engines were available, and both were equipped with twin sequential turbochargers; the two-rotor 13B-REW and the three-rotor 20B-REW. The triple rotor 20B-REW had 2 litres (1962 cc) of displacement, making it the largest capacity rotary offered for sale by Mazda. It produces and of torque with twin turbochargers sourced from Hitachi. and the first in Japan to use the "Palmnet" serial data communication system for ECU-to-ECAT operation.

The fourth generation Cosmo was ahead of its time electronically as well by being offered with Car Communication System, a CRT colour touch-screen controlling climate control, mobile phone, GPS car navigation, NTSC TV, radio and CD player. The instrumentation used a LCD rendering analog gauges with indicator needles that "floated" and using vivid colors for various functions. With over of torque available at just 1,800 rpm, the Cosmo could launch from standstill to freeway speeds quickly; however, this came at the expense of heavy fuel consumption.

The Cosmo was manufactured from February 1990 until September 1995, and gathered a total of 8,875 sales. A split of 60/40 sales between 13B-REW and 20B-REW variants made the triple rotor 20B-REW version a rarer car. Although the Cosmo remained a Japanese market-only vehicle (export had been proposed originally under the Eunos sales channel, and under the stillborn Amati brand in the USA),

The Cosmo 21 was revealed around the same time as many other retro style cars, including the Volkswagen New Beetle and the New Mini, adding to the growing list of retro style cars being produced in this era. Rumours of the Cosmo 21 entering limited production circulated in Japan, but the car remained purely a concept.

References

Notes

Bibliography

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  • MazdaCosmoSport.com – 1st Gen Mazda Cosmo Sport community
  • New York Rotary Association – New Yorks Biggest Rotary Engine Auto Club (NYRA)
  • Garage HB – 3rd Gen (81–89) Cosmo online community
  • Cosmo retrospective from Classic Motorsports magazine
  • Mazda Cosmo Sport 1100 – Carsguide Car of the Week
  • Mazda Cosmo Sport Buyers Guide at Classic Motorsports