Mazda's Wankel rotary engine has always been unique in the automotive ... and a significant weight savings over the current RX-8, which isn't exactly a porker as it is. Supposedly, the new rotary ...

Through the history of internal combustion engines, there has been plenty of evolution, but few revolutions. Talk of radically different designs always leads to a single name – Wankel.

Take the Wankel engine, or rotary engine, for example. Few automakers have ever created one, and Mazda was the only one to put it into mass production in models like the RX-7 and RX-8. It saw ...

If there's one thing forever associated with the Wankel rotary engine, it's Mazda. Powering production vehicles from the Cosmo's launch in May 1967 to the last RX-8 leaving the plant in June 2012 ...

Although there was briefly a company called Rotary Rocket, the term is much better known as a nickname for the Mazda RX-7 — one of the few cars that used a Wankel, or rotary, engine. If you ever ...

By the end of its production run in the early 2000s, the Mazda RX-7 rotary engine made as much as 276 hp. The RX-8 followed with another chapter for the Wankel engine. The Mazda RX-8 rotary engine ...

Put simply, it was because the RX-8 was just too darned expensive to run. Regardless of whether I had the Wankel wailing ... because Mazda’s rotary engine has a lot going for it.

Car’s editors noted that the Wankel engine’s smooth operation was most ... prone to excessive wear on the rotor’s tips. The Mazda RX-8 came equipped with a six-speed manual transmission ...