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 ...

The Mazda RX-8 is a well-known model among car enthusiasts for its unique place in automotive history: when it was discontinued, it also brought an end to Mazda’s decades-long tradition of building ...

Long before Felix Wankel became synonymous with rotary engines, an inventive Hungarian-American engineer named Stephen M. Balzer secured one of the earliest patents for a rotary-powered automobile on ...

Perfectly tuning the heat range of an engine's spark plugs is something of a dark art to all but the most well versed tuners and the engineering egg heads at automotive OEMs. Getting the spark plug ...

The challenge isn’t building a fast rotary car. It’s building one that ordinary people can afford without sacrificing what makes it special. Mazda continues exploring rotary engine sports cars, ...