The Wankel, better known as the rotary engine, has always held a unique place in the world of performance cars. Compact, lightweight, and capable of high revs, a rotary offered an alternative to ...

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 ...

In 1965, a company called the Curtiss-Wright Corporation bought a Ford Mustang and installed its own version of Felix Wankel's rotary engine under the hood. The aeronautical company was partly formed ...

Wankel engines first saw use in production cars as early as 1964 — and not even in a Mazda, but rather in an NSU. That little single-rotor powerplant quickly evolved into the more typical two-rotor ...

Thomas has spent two years working in the auto journalism industry, contributing to a UK-based newspaper and writing for Euronewsweek. A full-time writer and lifelong engineering enthusiast, he now ...

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 ...

Everyone generally knows about piston and rotary engines, with many a flamewar having been waged over the pros and cons of each design. The “correct” answer is thus to combine both into a single ...