That doesn't surprise me. Mazda's rotary engine has always been a maintenance/reliability beast and it doesn't help that most owners (especially RX-8) of rotary powered vehicles are oblivious to its unique requirements.

I don't know why Mazda stuck w/ rotary power in the RX-8 since that technology nearly put them out of business once already and hasn't really shown its superiority to other power options since the 1970s. Though I suppose they chose rotary for the RX-8 because the RX is a heritage car and because they wanted unique power. And while I'm not sure what else they could have used - maybe the supercharged 2.3 they've got in the MazdaSpeed6 - it looks like rotary was a mistake.

M.

 

In some ways it is hard to tell the recall from normal Rotary performance. Rotaries have always gone through oil like a sieve, recall or no recall. That is because with a rotary, unlike a normal piston engine, the oil film used to lubricate the apex tip seals inside the engine gets spun around in elliptical circles, where the film is exposed to the constant firing of the spark plugs and the resulting flame front. Thus the oil film gets continually burned up at more or less a constant rate, causing oil consumption, oil smoke, high emissions, and a big load on the catalytic converter. It is one of the penalties paid for a rotary's smoothness, high redline, lack of noise and vibration, ultra-light weight, and high HP output per liter.