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 ...

Ask most people what a rotary engine is, and they'll describe a Mazda RX-7 with a triangular rotor spinning inside a housing, combustion happening in sequence as the rotor moves rather than across a ...

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 ...

The FD RX-7's 13B-REW was Mazda's rotary masterpiece—but owning one in 2026 comes with a serious financial commitment.

The piston engine may be the most common type of internal combustion engine found in consumer automotive vehicles. That doesn't mean it's the only option drivers have ever had access to. In the 1960s, ...