General Motors Rotary Combustion Engine

They stated the Vega-rotary would be sold as a package with performance items, including mag-styled wheels, radial tires, and rally stripes.

To meet those standards GM had to scrap the design theory of widely spaced dual spark plugs and move them closer to the rotor chamber, Mazda fashion.

That helped lower emissions but did not improve fuel economy, and GM was unwilling to face gas mileage criticism that Mazda withstood.

The surface plating tended to crack and flake away around the exhaust port, blamed by GM engineers on sudden cooling after hard, hot running.

Compared to the normal piston (engine) Vega's 20 to 26 mpg‑US (11.8 to 9.0 L/100 km; 24 to 31 mpg‑imp), the whole rotary deal begins to look just a little less attractive, with what the price of gasoline skyrocketing, but that's another matter.

No immediate solutions were being revealed by engineers working all but around the clock, their backs to the two walls of production tooling requirements and the need to freeze a design to begin emission certification.

Ed Cole and his top engineer Frank Winchell, had taken personal charge of the project and had stopped work on all other GM-rotaries to focus on the problems of the Vega RC2-206 Wankel.

[9] As General Motors managers were cancelling the Wankel project, the R&D team partly released the results of their most recent research, which claimed to have solved the fuel economy problem, and reliable engines with a lifespan above 530,000 miles.