The rotary engine was an unconventional design that delivered great power for its size. Here's what's good and bad about it.

You hear endless myths about the Mazda RX-7, from breathless praise of its “magic” to horror stories about blown apex seals.

The rotary engine, with its egg-like block and triangular rotor, is an oddball even among all the other oddball engine designs—sorry, three-cylinder, twin-turbo, camless Koenigsegg, ya basic. That ...

Chris Bruce has worked in the automotive industry since 2011 and has written thousands of stories about cars, motorsports, and motorcycles in that time. He has written for Autoblog, Autoviva, CarFax, ...

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 ...

It doesn't seem like it now, but the words 'Mazda' and 'rotary' go hand-in-hand like roast beef and mashed potatoes. And in recent news, Mazda could give the upcoming MX-30 electric vehicle a rotary ...

The Wankel rotary engine is known for its troubled life in the mainstream automotive industry, its high power-to-weight ratio, and the intoxicating buzz it makes at full tilt. Popular with die-hard ...

How the 13B-MSP Renesis evolved from earlier Mazda rotary designs, technical features explained, and common problems and maintenance issues discussed. The 13B-MSP Renesis rotary engine powered the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Peter Lyon is based in Tokyo and writes about the car industry. At the Japan Mobility Show two years ago, Mazda unveiled a ...

Bruno started at Top Speed in 2022 and now serves as Senior Editor for ICE while also training writers across CarBuzz, HotCars, and TopSpeed. A car and motorcycle enthusiast, he enjoys writing about ...

The rotary engine had its moment of automotive glory with Mazda, but while the Japanese automaker's rotary engines where small-displacement, high-revving, buzz bombs, one American startup tried a very ...

Intake, compression, power, then exhaust. Every 4-stroke engine ever made – about 80% of all engines currently in existence – function on this principle – even rotary engines. But now, Porsche has ...