Most car enthusiasts associate the term “rotary engine” with Felix Wankel’s invention, developed in the 1950s and most ...

Mazda is most noted for its rotary engine, developed by Felix Wankel in Germany before World War II. But of all its rotary-powered cars, one stands out.

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 ...

Think you know everything about rotary engines? Well have you ever heard of the bi-rotary engine that mixes pistons and ...

Launched in the late 1960s, the Ro 80 wasn't just the world's first mass-produced sedan with rotary power, but also one of the most innovative production vehicles of its era. Follow us: The rotary ...

The R130 was a very rare model, produced for only three years and with fewer than 1,000 units built. It was also notable as the only front-wheel-drive Mazda model powered by a rotary engine until the ...

Long before Felix Wankel became synonymous with rotary engines, an inventive Hungarian-American engineer named Stephen M. Balzer secured one of the earliest patents for a rotary-powered automobile on ...

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, ...