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 ...

For more than a decade the name Wankel has popped up whenever car enthusiasts start talking about advanced-design automotive powerplants. The theory of the Wankel engine goes back to 1954 when Dr.

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

When it comes to unique engine designs, one of the most prolific is the trusty rotary configuration. Instead of featuring a number of spherical cylinders moving up and down like in most internal ...

In the early days of engine building, a pre-Wankel rotary engine powered thousands of aircraft. One of several problems: It spewed castor oil on its pilots.