Rotary engines are compact, smooth, and powerful, so why don't more automakers use them? Well, it's complicated.

The history of automotive engineering is a graveyard of radical ideas, where many promising technologies have fallen by the ...

The German engineer Felix Wankel, inventor of a rotary engine that will be used in race cars, dies on October 9, 1988, in Lahr, Germany. Wankel reportedly came up with the basic idea for a new type of ...

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 ...

When most people hear the term "rotary engine," they probably think of Mazda first, as rotary engines have been part and parcel of the Japanese automaker's mantra for decades. In fact, Mazda proclaims ...

In theory, Wankel-style rotary internal combustion engines have many advantages: they ditch the cumbersome crankcase and piston design, replacing it with a simple, single-chamber design and a thick, ...

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 ...

Good news, everyone! Mazda is not only reassembling a dedicated team of engineers for rotary engine development, as we’ve reported earlier, but today it also announced its intention to expedite ...

The FD RX-7's 13B-REW was Mazda's rotary masterpiece—but owning one in 2026 comes with a serious financial commitment.

The rotary is kind of like the Rudy (from the movie "Rudy") of engines. It's a little smaller than the others, and might not be quite as good, but you can't help rooting for it. Mazda says that you ...

Language is an imperfect medium, but it's what we've got, so let's go with it. Determining the swept volume of inventor Felix Wankel's rotary engine can generate more arguments than claiming what a GT ...