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A Mazda Cosmo is on display at Signature Mazda in Richmond.

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A Mazda Cosmo is on display at Signature Mazda in Richmond.

Photo submitted

Vintage sports car on display

By Angel St. George

Published 12:01 PST, Tue February 15, 2022

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A rare car is on display at the Signature Mazda showroom in Richmond.

The futuristic Cosmo model is one of only 1,500 cars produced between 1967 and 1971. These little devils were made exclusively for production in Japan and Europe, and were designed with distinctly Italian features.

Mazda has a long history with Italian luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari in terms of sharing technologies, according to Marko Joannou, Signature Mazda general manager and co-owner.

“The Cosmo is essentially Mazda’s attempt at getting into the Italian sports car market,” says Joannou.

For many years, Joannou and his co-owners Daryl Griffith and Vikki Kazakoff wanted to buy one of these eye-catching road-runners, but the only one in Canada at the time was stationed at Mazda’s head office in Toronto. The road to owning the legendary Cosmo was a long one, until a seller in San Francisco who imported it in 2010 emerged on the market. The Signature Mazda team saw the listing and purchased the car before other buyers could place their bids.

Currently, there are only two other Cosmos in Canada: one belongs to a collector in Alberta and one is on display in Toronto.

The Cosmo was a popular car when it first rolled off the production line, but admirers would be hard pressed to find one even if they scavenged the global car market.

“We’re a boutique company and that distinguishes us from other big brands, we are exclusive in the global scheme of things. To put it in perspective, a company like Toyota makes about 20 million vehicles for the world each year and Mazda makes about 1.2 (million),” says Joannou.

When the Cosmo first came on the market it was valued at $4,000 in American dollars. Now, its value is nearly $250,000.

There are many handmade components in Mazda vehicles. Joannou says the company has master clay-men who design and sculpt vehicles from scratch to precise specifications using models. Current technology allows Mazda to further enhance the precision of its hand-carving techniques.

The Wankel engine is one of the Cosmo’s other exclusive features. It is a patented rotary engine that was purchased by Mazda from Felix Wankel in the 1960s and further refined by the company.

Typical internal combustion engines work on a piston and a crank shaft, which are components that move up and down. But the Wankel design is basically like a spinning diamond, and as it spins it creates a massive amount of energy.

“Usually, the higher an engine’s displacement the more power it can generate, while the lower the displacement the less fuel it can consume. With a Wankel, you wouldn’t need more than a 1.3 litre or a 1.8 litre rotary engine to generate the same power you would get from a 2.5 litre or three litre internal combustion engine,” says Joannou.

The rotary concept is a historical feature of the Mazda brand. It is rumoured to re-emerge with the rebirth of the Genesis model, which will probably have a twin rotary and twin turbo engine with about six or seven horsepower. Signature Mazda hopes to see this model rolling out in the next two to five years.

The Cosmo on display has had some upgrades from its original features, including the wheels and certain components in the engine that enhance reliability, but overall it looks similar to when it first rolled off the production line. Its interior boasts unique houndstooth upholstering with wood-grain finishing and the exterior is vanilla-creme.

The Cosmo exhibited at the Richmond showroom has never been in a race and Signature Mazda does not plan on racing it anytime soon.

“It is a collector’s vehicle, so the only place it will make an appearance outside of our showroom is at car shows,” says Joannou.