You are correct that significantly more well-known Wankel design rotary engines are of the “flying ... design that was mainly used for aircraft. After looking at the design it’s clear why ...

Talk of radically different designs always leads to a single name – Wankel. The Wankel rotary engine, most notably used in automobiles by Mazda, has been around since the late 1950’s.

The first rotary engines were primarily used for aircraft during World War I, but the design was abandoned due to flaws and inefficiencies. In 1954, German engineer Felix Wankel invented a new ...

The issue, as it has pretty much always been, is environmental. While the Wankel rotary engine does indeed make a lot of power in a small, lightweight package, it does so while burning lots of ...

Mazda's Wankel rotary engine has always been unique in the automotive landscape as a mass-produced internal combustion engine that eschews such unsightly items as pistons, valves and camshafts.

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 ...