Pop the hood on a classic Mazda RX-7 or RX-8 and the engine bay looks oddly empty. That is the charm of the rotary engine: a compact lump of metal that trades pistons and valves for a spinning ...

The engine in question was the Wankel rotary, named after German engineer Felix Wankel, who first patented the concept in 1929. Instead of pistons moving back and forth, the rotary engine used a ...

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 ...

Unveiled in 1973, the OCR 1000 was the world's first production motorcycle to feature an automotive-derived, twin-rotor engine, and its creators dubbed it the finest, most technologically advanced ...

Got a burning question or simply need some advice with problems you’ve encountered while wrenching on your current/future projects? Ask our automotive guru Eric Hsu anything—literally, he’s going to ...

Mazda has been the only carmaker to manufacture Felix Wankel’s rotary engine design in volume, and the design went out of production when the RX-8 left the market in 2012. The2022 Mazda MX-30 hybrid ...

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 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 ...

Lou is a freelance journalist and content writer with a focus on the automotive world. After graduating from Coventry University (Automotive Journalism MA) in 2020, she worked in automotive e-commerce ...