Agreed.
Saturn V and 90% of the space race we owe to the Germans. In some ways it was Germany versus Russia in the space race. This is why to this day in comedies, cartoons and popular culture we still have the stereotype of a Scientist, Enginer or other Genius level guy with a white lab coat as having a thick German accent.
But gettign back to cars, Wankel/Rotary engines are one of the best examples of the Japanese perfecting & reinventing someone else's design.
It's much easier to pick appart an invention, refine it, whittle away at the imperfections and call it your own than to actually INVENT something from scratch. For what it's worth I have an RX7 Brochure from when I was in High School (I think it's like 1994) that shows a cutaway of the Rotary and does give some credit to Felix Wankel for his ingenious design.
I'd be interested to find out how many automotive technologies the Japanese have developed themselves. From absolute scratch.
*crickets chirping*
I'm not talking about reverse engineering a Austin MINI into the Honda 600 or making DOHC a household acronym in the late 80s when the technology was already there well before WWII. I mean something that THEY came up with and were the FIRST to attempt.
Fly you're a smart guy... your knowledge in Avaiation and WWII by far surpases mine, I'm seriously asking I can't off the top of my head think of even one thing.
Was the Miller Cycle developed wholy by Mazda? How about VVTi... didn;'t the Germans fiddle with that first or did BMW borrow the technology after Toyota invented & developed it?