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 ...

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

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, ...

The electric motor might carry the hype banner at the moment, but some minds remain convinced that there's plenty of innovation left to be extracted from internal combustion. AIE is one of the rotary ...

Over-the-top rotary builds are an enthusiast tradition. Because so few rotary cars have been made, the limits of the engine type haven't been fully exploited by automakers. It's been tuners who have ...

You hear endless myths about the Mazda RX-7, from breathless praise of its “magic” to horror stories about blown apex seals.

Rotary engines (also known as Wankel engines and Wankel rotary engines) are quite different from piston or "reciprocating" engines. One of the distinguishing features is that they don't need valves to ...

How the 13B-MSP Renesis evolved from earlier Mazda rotary designs, technical features explained, and common problems and maintenance issues discussed. The 13B-MSP Renesis rotary engine powered the ...

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 ...

The Wankel rotary engine is known for its troubled life in the mainstream automotive industry, its high power-to-weight ratio, and the intoxicating buzz it makes at full tilt. Popular with die-hard ...

For years, we've heard rumors that Mazda was going to bring back the rotary engine and give us a new sports car as a successor to the RX-7 and RX-8. And yet, arguably unsurprisingly, it hasn't ...