Not every engine has a set of pistons that move up and down in a cylinder. The Wankel, or rotary engine, delivers its power with rotational force rather than a reciprocating mass that hammers out ...

The rotary was the most radical rethink of the combustion engine in over a hundred years — and it paid the price for being different. Mazda introduced the innovative Wankel rotary engine in the 1967 ...

Chris Bruce has worked in the automotive industry since 2011 and has written thousands of stories about cars, motorsports, and motorcycles in that time. He has written for Autoblog, Autoviva, CarFax, ...

Mazda has a history of shrugging off convention, and this sports coupe was not only unique, but it was the last to feature a ...

Mazda 13B rotary engine in a white Mazda RX-7 engine bay. - TTTNIS/Wikimedia Commons When it comes to unconventional engine design, few exceed the Wankel rotary in terms of weirdness. Despite that, ...

Designed and championed by self-taught engineer Felix Wankel, the rotary engine is now most closely associated with Japanese automaker Mazda. Many of the greatest Mazdas ever made, including the RX-7 ...

Antonio is a chemical engineering student pursuing his master's degree in chemical engineering and sustainable processes. Throughout his academic journey, he has gained substantial knowledge in areas ...

It's difficult to imagine that a company that started out as a cork manufacturer in 1920, would today be a successful automaker on a global level. According to Statista, Mazda sold around 407,000 ...

Mazda filed six patents related to rotary engines with the Japanese Patent Office on the same day in June, CarBuzz has discovered. The Wankel rotary engine popularized by Mazda will make its return as ...

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 ...

When trailblazing in innovation, sometimes a unique problem requires an out-of-the-box solution.

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 ...