You hear endless myths about the Mazda RX-7, from breathless praise of its “magic” to horror stories about blown apex seals. Strip away the fanboy noise and you are left with a very specific kind of ...

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 internal combustion engine, for all its mechanical sophistication, still runs on a 19th-century mechanical idea: pistons ...

Wankel engines first saw use in production cars as early as 1964 — and not even in a Mazda, but rather in an NSU. That little single-rotor powerplant quickly evolved into the more typical two-rotor ...

In the early days of engine building, a pre-Wankel rotary engine powered thousands of aircraft. One of several problems: It spewed castor oil on its pilots.

The Mazda RX-8 has always had a cult following, but the rotary engine can scare off buyers who want something simpler to live ...