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 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, ...
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.
Mazda's Wankel rotary powerplant boasts a proud and storied endurance racing career that began and ended in truly spectacular fashion. The rotary first took to a European circuit in anger in 1968, ...
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 ...