The internal combustion engine, for all its mechanical sophistication, still runs on a 19th-century mechanical idea: pistons rising and falling, a crankshaft spinning, a steam-age architecture ...

When Mazda discontinued the RX-8, most people assumed the rotary engine was finished. The RX-8 was the last production car to use Mazda's signature Wankel rotary, and its departure seemed to signal ...

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, ...

In the early '90s, Mazda's rotary-powered RX-7 was the quintessential Japanese two-seat sports car. But then the Miata arrived and changed the game.

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 ...

The electric motor might carry the hype banner at the moment, but some minds remain convinced that there's plenty of innovation left to be extracted from internal combustion. AIE is one of the rotary ...

Mazda’s rotary engine is coming back in the spotlight, but this time it’s not just a nostalgic callback to the RX-7 glory days. Instead, it’s quietly shaping the brand’s electrified future. Rather ...

Kenichi Yamamoto, who led the engineering team that produced a commercially viable rotary engine at what is now known as Mazda Motor Co. and later became its president and chairman, died Dec. 20 in ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. While modern engines feature many tweaks and improvements on the original ideas, they usually aren't as interesting as the strange ...