Everyone generally knows about piston and rotary engines, with many a flamewar having been waged over the pros and cons of each design. The “correct” answer is thus to combine both ...

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 ...

Over-the-top rotary builds are an enthusiast tradition. Because so few rotary cars have been made, the limits of the engine type haven't been fully exploited by automakers. It's been tuners who have ...

Chinese firm Dongan Auto revives the Wankel engine, developing a lightweight prototype aimed at next-gen aerial mobility ...

Rotary engines (also known as Wankel engines and Wankel rotary engines) are quite different from piston or "reciprocating" engines. One of the distinguishing features is that they don't need valves to ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Peter Lyon is based in Tokyo and writes about the car industry. Mazda’s rotary engine has been officially reborn, but not quite in ...

It was an era when General Motors threw itself into bold experiments in design, technology, and engineering. The company knew it had to reinvent itself, but just did not know which way to go. So it ...

Rob Dahm, notorious rotary-powered car builder, has firmly jumped into the deep end of the pool with his latest project: The world's only 15.7-liter, tri-turbo Y12 rotary engine. If that doesn't make ...

For a time, the Wankel rotary engine seemed like the future. In 1963, German automaker NSU—later absorbed into Audi—debuted the Wankel Spider, the first internal-combustion production car not powered ...

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 ...

Alina has been enthusiastic about vehicles her entire life, and even from an early age found herself itching to get behind the wheel. Through high school and college, she could be found reading ...