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 Wankel, better known as the rotary engine, has always held a unique place in the world of performance cars. Compact, lightweight, and capable of high revs, a rotary offered an alternative to ...

In the early '90s, Mazda's rotary-powered RX-7 was the quintessential Japanese two-seat sports car. But then the Miata arrived and changed the game.

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 ...

Mazda's automotive history dates back to 1931 when the company formerly known as Tokyo Cork Kogyo Co. produced its first self-powered vehicle, an auto-rickshaw that was essentially a tricycle. Common ...

Almost every internal combustion vehicle on the planet today uses the classic piston engine. These run by converting heat energy into reciprocating motion, and then rotary motion that ultimately ...

Wankel rotary engine powered thousands of aircraft. One of several problems: It spewed castor oil on its pilots.

While modern engines feature many tweaks and improvements on the original ideas, they usually aren't as interesting as the strange contraptions engineers experimented with in the early days. Take, for ...