While most people might know rotary engines for their use in cars, a pair of companies made use of them in chainsaws — and ...

The Mazda 787B carved its name into motorsport history in 1991 as the first Japanese car to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall. Even more legendary was its powertrain, a screaming 2.6-liter ...

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 ...

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 ...

Good news, everyone! Mazda is not only reassembling a dedicated team of engineers for rotary engine development, as we’ve reported earlier, but today it also announced its intention to expedite ...

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 ...

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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Peter Lyon is based in Tokyo and writes about the car industry. At the Japan Mobility Show two years ago, Mazda unveiled a ...

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 ...

A Wankel engine is a type of rotary engine, but not all rotary engines are Wankel engines. Wrapping your mind around this idea will help you to better understand the similarities as well as the ...

Language is an imperfect medium, but it's what we've got, so let's go with it. Determining the swept volume of inventor Felix Wankel's rotary engine can generate more arguments than claiming what a GT ...