Was just talking about this with the wife last night... she almost bought one when we were first dating, before my Dad (who's a service writer at a garage) showed us all the maintenance problems shops were encountering (blown engines the most notorious). Look at it this way, if rotary technology was reliable, why wouldn't more manufacturers use it? (1) car out of the hundreds of models produced each year uses it. The reason Mazda can get away with it is that it's what has always made the RX unique.