The rotary engine has been a Mazda staple since 1967. It powered one of the most famous and eccentric Japanese sports car line-ups, the RX-series, until 2012 when Mazda discontinued pure ...

How weird and wonderful is the rotary engine, with its rebellious "why can't we do it like this" approach to automotive engineering? The rotary represents a compact, smooth, and quite mechanically ...

The rotary was the most radical rethink of the combustion engine in over a hundred years — and it paid the price for being different. Mazda introduced the innovative Wankel rotary engine in the 1967 ...

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Mazda’s obsession with the rotary engine. No matter how market trends change, how regulations tighten, or how quickly electrification advances, ...

The Mazda Iconic SP concept of the 2023 Japan Mobility Show was the sign of a new Mazda sports car that we’ve been awaiting for a decade—no, two. The Wankel rotary-powered, popup headlight-equipped ...

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, ...

The Mazda Iconic SP sports car concept was first shown at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show. The two-seater in Viola Red with 2+2 interior space was promised as a production car, similar in design, in the ...

Chris Bruce has worked in the automotive industry since 2011 and has written thousands of stories about cars, motorsports, and motorcycles in that time. He has written for Autoblog, Autoviva, CarFax, ...

After years of rumors and experimentation behind closed doors, the Mazda rotary engine is officially back. The Vision X-Coupe, a plug-in hybrid concept showcased at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, has ...

The gist is that, according to Mogo, the Iconic-SP concept was very well received. Count MotorTrend in that camp, as the sleek coupe concept and its cult-classic rotary engine (even relegated to range ...

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 ...