TWENTY-FIVE years ago, a German book salesman named Felix Wankel entertained a revolutionary, if not heretical notion: he fell to wondering if the standard gasoline engine, man’s commonest prime mover ...

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.

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.

Launched in the late 1960s, the Ro 80 wasn't just the world's first mass-produced sedan with rotary power, but also one of the most innovative production vehicles of its era. Follow us: The rotary ...

If there's one thing forever associated with the Wankel rotary engine, it's Mazda. Powering production vehicles from the Cosmo's launch in May 1967 to the last RX-8 leaving the plant in June 2012, the ...

The Wankel engine seems to pop up in surprising places every so often, only to disappear into the ether before someone ultimately resurrects it for a new application and swears to get it right this ...

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