No-one who actually owned a rotary-equipped car that knew what the go pedal was for think they were POS's.
The sales numbers didn't back that up. Mazda would have gone bust if Ford hadn't bought a 30+% stake of them in 1979. The EPA hated rotary engines, so there's that too. The limited fan base of rotary engines seems to revolve around "Look !!! the engine can do 20,000 RPMs on a drag strip"!!! and people forget how bad the driveability was on these cars sometimes and how quickly they wore out in real life by people driving them in normal everyday driving. I hear Mazda is re-introducing the Rotary in 2019 for hybrids, so maybe they have things figured out now.
"It's the good cars that sell". (Old auto industry saying, but it's true).