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 ...

There are many different forms of internal combustion engines, but most use the same basic principle. Explosions in the combustion chamber move pistons up and down to spin a crankshaft. That ...

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

Rotary engines made their biggest impact in Mazda sports cars, but a recent episode of "Jay Leno's Garage" delves into the rotary's earlier history. Before it was popularized by Mazda, the rotary ...

The rotary engine was an unconventional design that delivered great power for its size. Here's what's good and bad about it.

Sure, the rotary engine may be an oil-eating machine filled with Nazi-designed spinning tortilla chips that turn money into nightmares, but god, I love them. My first car was an RX-7, and while, ...

The traditional piston engine has garnered the vast majority of attention and application in the internal combustion age, but there was another: the Wankel rotary engine. German engineer Felix Wankel ...

After what feels like countless news stories anticipating its return, the rotary engine is officially back as a backup generator for the new Mazda MX-30 e-Skyactiv R-EV. Whereas the regular MX-30 is a ...

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 ...

Chris Bruce has worked in the automotive industry since 2011 and has written thousands of stories about cars, motorsports, and motorcycles in that time. He has written for Autoblog, Autoviva, CarFax, ...