Talk of radically different designs always leads to a single name – Wankel. The Wankel rotary engine, most notably used in automobiles by Mazda, has been around since the late 1950’s.

Since it looks like Mazda may very well revive the Wankel rotary engine as a range extender for electric cars, there's no better time to become reacquainted with the quirky internal-combustion engine.

Mazda wowed gearheads all over the world when it unveiled its rotary-powered supercar, though it all ended in tears and a ...

This “inside-out” approach to the Wankel rotary engine is a key differentiator. Traditional Wankel engines feature a triangular rotor in a peanut-shaped housing, which Alec identified as a sig ...

The issue, as it has pretty much always been, is environmental. While the Wankel rotary engine does indeed make a lot of power in a small, lightweight package, it does so while burning lots of ...

Thus rotary engines tend to have high specific outputs ... The C111-I of 1969 had a three-rotor Wankel engine with 276bhp, while the C111-II of 1970 featured a four-rotor engine with 345bhp ...

The only cars in recent times to utilise a Wankel rotary engine have been Mazdas – the RX-8 being the most recent. But the revolutionary engine has made an appearance in plenty of other vehicles ...

Although there was briefly a company called Rotary Rocket, the term is much better known as a nickname for the Mazda RX-7 — one of the few cars that used a Wankel, or rotary, engine. If you ever ...