While modern engines feature many tweaks and improvements on the original ideas, they usually aren't as interesting as the strange contraptions engineers experimented with in the early days. Take, for ...

Astron aerospace has shown a partial prototype of a new rotary combustion engine it claims runs at an extraordinary 60% thermal efficiency, burning totally clean with zero NOx emissions and nothing ...

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 ...

The 1970s were full of strange automotive experiments, but few were as unlikely as a compact Japanese pickup powered by a screaming rotary engine. Mazda’s Rotary Engine Pickup, better known as the ...

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 ...

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, ...

We live in an age of downsizing in the automotive world. Super and hypercar manufacturers like McLaren and Ferrari are ditching big-capacity, high-cylinder count engines in favor of boosted V6 and V8 ...