The internal combustion engine, for all its mechanical sophistication, still runs on a 19th-century mechanical idea: pistons rising and falling, a crankshaft spinning, a steam-age architecture ...

Pop the hood on a classic Mazda RX-7 or RX-8 and the engine bay looks oddly empty. That is the charm of the rotary engine: a compact lump of metal that trades pistons and valves for a spinning ...

Most car enthusiasts associate the term “rotary engine” with Felix Wankel’s invention, developed in the 1950s and most commonly associated with Mazda. However, more than half a century before the ...

The rotary engine has been a Mazda staple since 1967. It powered one of the most famous and eccentric Japanese sports car line-ups, the RX-series, until 2012 when Mazda discontinued pure ...

Everyone generally knows about piston and rotary engines, with many a flamewar having been waged over the pros and cons of each design. The “correct” answer is thus to combine both into a single ...

Wankel rotary engine powered thousands of aircraft. One of several problems: It spewed castor oil on its pilots.

Alina has been enthusiastic about vehicles her entire life, and even from an early age found herself itching to get behind the wheel. Through high school and college, she could be found reading ...

If there's one thing forever associated with the Wankel rotary engine, it's Mazda. Powering production vehicles from the Cosmo's launch in May 1967 to the last RX-8 leaving the plant in June 2012, the ...