There’s been so much fuss about what looks like the return of the famed Mazda rotary engine this year, but according to Mazda top brass it’ll come with a caveat.

Speaking to Top Gear, Mazda’s design director Kevin Rice said that a new rotary-powered sports car and successor to the RX-8 is in the works, but will only make it to production if people will buy them.

The first hint at the rebirth of the rotary came last year when Mazda unveiled the jaw-dropping RX Vision concept car at the Tokyo Motor Show in October.

Although it was intended purely as a design study, the RX part of the concept’s name obviously pointed towards a rotary engine and the rumour mill went into overdrive.

Reports that Mazda were busy working on a new rotary were confirmed earlier this year when the manufacturer officially patented a new motor, codenamed the SkyActiv-R.

'We didn't just leave it with the RX-8'

“The height of the bonnet was done specifically to package a certain type of engine,” Mr Rice said. “Nobody else would have developed the rotary engine. We thought we could get something good out of it, which we did, but we never stopped developing it. We didn’t just leave it with the RX-8.”

It’s now expected that Mazda could aim to have the long-awaited follow-up to the RX-8 on the market by March 2018, when the iconic RX-7 will celebrate its 40th anniversary.

However, Mr Rice admitted that even though Mazda is confident it can overcome the rotary engine’s drawbacks, ensuring any future rotary-powered cars are economically viable is a different challenge.

But he did state that if sufficient demand from buyers was there, then the manufacturer would respond in kind and put a road-ready version of the RX Vision into production.

He said: “In the back rooms at Mazda, we’re still developing it, and when the world’s ready to buy another rotary, we’ll be ready to provide it.”

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