The Alfa Romeo engine you’ve never heard about
During the entire Sixties decade, the rotary engine as conceptualized by the German inventor Felix Wankel and developed by NSU became something of the auto industry’s darling: compact, light, powerful yet smooth, and made of few moving parts, it looked like the way of the future. No car company wanted to risk being left behind, so pretty much every automaker licensed the Wankel and NSU patents to start their own experiments with rotary engines. Including the small Italian specialist manufacturer Alfa Romeo.
The first contact between Alfa Romeo and NSU dates back to 1962, and the engineers from the two companies regularly exchanged information and experiences they made while tacking the Wankel’s main issue: the durability (or lack thereof) of the rotor’s apex seals. These crucial components of the Wankel engine design are subjected to extreme changes in temperature and pushed the material technology of the ’60s beyond its limits.
The small group of Alfa Romeo engineers working on the project tried a variety of possible materials, from graphite (which worked well but didn’t last nearly long enough) to even the good old cast iron (whose weight would cause the apex seals to actually ‘consume’ the stator due to their high centrifugal force).
