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 ...

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

You hear endless myths about the Mazda RX-7, from breathless praise of its “magic” to horror stories about blown apex seals. Strip away the fanboy noise and you are left with a very specific kind of ...

When Mazda discontinued the RX-8, most people assumed the rotary engine was finished. The RX-8 was the last production car to use Mazda's signature Wankel rotary, and its departure seemed to signal ...

In a world dominated by pistons, the rotary engine was something different for motorists. It was the vision of German engineer Felix Wankel, built on the belief that the up-and-down motion of pistons ...

Professor Aniebiet Inyang Ntui is a multi-faceted individual whose expertise spans the worlds of library and information science, environmental advocacy, and – perhaps surprisingly – the automotive ...

After years of rumors and experimentation behind closed doors, the Mazda rotary engine is officially back. The Vision X-Coupe, a plug-in hybrid concept showcased at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, has ...

There are a lot of strange automotive designs out there, but this defunct engine from the '70s may just be the weirdest one ...

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 ...