The NZFMR Porsche Festival was a huge success during January. To top it off, 402 Porsches — the most ever assembled in one place at one time in New Zealand — lined up on the grid for a parade lap. Porsche 911s seem to be the favoured model, but which is your favourite — the air-cooled or the water-cooled? Tell us in the poll below.
Suzuki had high hopes for its RE5 Wankel-engined bike launched in 1975. It had started looking at the Wankel engine in the mid-60s and bought the licence to the concept in 1970.
Apparently all of the big four Japanese makers experimented with the design, Yamaha even showing a rotary-engined bike at a motor show in 1972. But Suzuki was the only one of the big four to go into production. Like many others at the time, Suzuki believed that the light, compact, free-revving Wankel design would consign piston engines — with their complex, multiple, whirring valves and pistons, which (can you believe it?) had to reverse direction all the time — to history.