Rambler’s Amazing New Rotary Engine!

Add this to the many ways we already witnessed connections between Renault and Rambler/American Motors. Of course, the former bought the latter in the 1980s, and Rambler provided the bodies for the IKA venture between Kaiser and Renault in Argentina, and now, via the October 1964 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, we see that Rambler worked with Renault to develop a rotary engine. It appears the project never got very far, and we can almost infer that from the article, which speculates wildly that Rambler might use it in a front-drive application – or maybe a rear-engine, rear-drive – and doesn’t offer up any proof that AMC had even built a running prototype by that point. Of course, AMC’s flirtation with rotary engines flared up again during the development of the Pacer almost a decade later; one has to wonder whether those were isolated incidents, or whether some engineer at AMC really wanted to see a rotary in production.

Thanks, Paul Bellefeuille, for discovering and sending us the magazine!