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.

It’s common in this line of work to stumble upon a story while researching for another story. Digging through archives and ...

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 ...

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 ...

In theory, Wankel-style rotary internal combustion engines have many advantages: they ditch the cumbersome crankcase and piston design, replacing it with a simple, single-chamber design and a thick, ...

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 ...

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 ...