The rotary engine, a unique and unconventional design, has provided Mazda with remarkable advantages in the world of racing.

Rotary engines made their biggest impact in Mazda sports cars, but a recent episode of "Jay Leno's Garage" delves into the rotary's earlier history. Before it was popularized by Mazda, the rotary ...

At Old Rhinebeck Airdrome in Red Hook, New York, sits one of the premier collections of vintage aircraft in the United States. Director of Maintenance Mark Mondello is one of the key people ...

Long before Felix Wankel became synonymous with rotary engines, an inventive Hungarian-American engineer named Stephen M. Balzer secured one of the earliest patents for a rotary-powered automobile on ...

The rotary is kind of like the Rudy (from the movie “Rudy”) of engines. It’s a little smaller than the others, and might not be quite as good, but you can’t help rooting for it. Mazda says that you ...

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 ...

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 ...

Professor Aniebiet Inyang Ntui is a multi-faceted individual whose expertise spans the worlds of library and information science, environmental advocacy, and – perhaps surprisingly – the automotive ...

If there's one thing forever associated with the Wankel rotary engine, it's Mazda. Powering production vehicles from the Cosmo's launch in May 1967 to the last RX-8 leaving the plant in June 2012, the ...

Rotary engines differ from conventional ones in many respects — and one of them is the fact that they use two different spark plugs. Here's why.