For more than a decade the name Wankel has popped up whenever car enthusiasts start talking about advanced-design automotive powerplants. The theory of the Wankel engine goes back to 1954 when Dr.

Wankel rotary engines, typically but not exclusively found in Mazdas, certainly lean on the "quirkier" side of modern powertrain systems, made quirkier because most rotary-powered cars on the road ...

Gilbert Smith is an automotive journalist with over five years of specialized research and writing experience. Before joining CarBuzz in 2024, he produced in-depth buyer’s guides and feature articles ...

A German engineer, Felix Wankel, is credited with developing the world's first rotary engine in the 1950s. Wankel rotary engines use a triangular rotor spinning in a semi-oval case on an eccentric ...

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 ...

Rotary engines have almost completely gone out of production, but they’re still beloved by enthusiasts. Eschewing pistons for a spinning three-sided rotor, they rev to the moon and sound great doing ...

Internal combustion engines have still got a few punches left in them. Case in point: Kiwi drifter "Mad Mike" Whiddett has unveiled "the wildest drift car I could think of," built around the world's ...