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 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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The rotary was the most radical rethink of the combustion engine in over a hundred years — and it paid the price for being different. Mazda introduced the innovative Wankel rotary engine in the 1967 ...

Mazda 13B rotary engine in a white Mazda RX-7 engine bay. - TTTNIS/Wikimedia Commons When it comes to unconventional engine design, few exceed the Wankel rotary in terms of weirdness. Despite that, ...

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 ...

Perfectly tuning the heat range of an engine's spark plugs is something of a dark art to all but the most well versed tuners and the engineering egg heads at automotive OEMs. Getting the spark plug ...