In the late 1960s, when most sedans still looked and drove like rolling conservatism, NSU put a radical four-door on the road ...

The first time the public saw the 1968 Mazda Cosmo, it looked like a spaceship that had somehow slipped onto a show stand.

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 ...

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 ...

The engine in question was the Wankel rotary, named after German engineer Felix Wankel, who first patented the concept in 1929. Instead of pistons moving back and forth, the rotary engine used a ...

While modern engines feature many tweaks and improvements on the original ideas, they usually aren't as interesting as the strange contraptions engineers experimented with in the early days. Take, for ...

Thomas has spent two years working in the auto journalism industry, contributing to a UK-based newspaper and writing for Euronewsweek. A full-time writer and lifelong engineering enthusiast, he now ...

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 ...

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 ...