Astron aerospace has shown a partial prototype of a new rotary combustion engine it claims runs at an extraordinary 60% thermal efficiency, burning totally clean with zero NOx emissions and nothing ...

The internal combustion engine, for all its mechanical sophistication, still runs on a 19th-century mechanical idea: pistons rising and falling, a crankshaft spinning, a steam-age architecture ...

Pop the hood on a classic Mazda RX-7 or RX-8 and the engine bay looks oddly empty. That is the charm of the rotary engine: a compact lump of metal that trades pistons and valves for a spinning ...

Over-the-top rotary builds are an enthusiast tradition. Because so few rotary cars have been made, the limits of the engine type haven't been fully exploited by automakers. It's been tuners who have ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Everyone generally knows about piston and rotary engines, with many a flamewar having been waged over the pros and cons of each design. The “correct” answer is thus to combine both into a single ...

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 ...

Language is an imperfect medium, but it's what we've got, so let's go with it. Determining the swept volume of inventor Felix Wankel's rotary engine can generate more arguments than claiming what a GT ...