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 ...

Justin Cupler has been a member of the TopSpeed team since 2012. Justin's love for cars started back when he was just five years old, helping his dad work on his 1957 Chevy Bell Air and then his 1966 ...

It rose to prominence in the Mazda RX-7 model line, but the last new car feature one was the Mazda RX-8. Since then, Mazda has been continually developing the technology with the aim of bringing it ...

Antonio is a chemical engineering student pursuing his master's degree in chemical engineering and sustainable processes. Throughout his academic journey, he has gained substantial knowledge in areas ...

Rotary engines differ from conventional ones in many respects — and one of them is the fact that they use two different spark ...

Mazda has been building new parts for the original MX-5 Miata for a couple of years and even offers a full restoration service over in Japan. Now it's expanding the parts program to the RX-7, ...

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 ...

Got a burning question or simply need some advice with problems you’ve encountered while wrenching on your current/future projects? Ask our automotive guru Eric Hsu anything—literally, he’s going to ...

The automotive world hasn’t seen a rotary engine in production since the Mazda RX-8 was axed in 2012. However, the Crighton CR700W is bringing it back in spectacular fashion in a machine billed as the ...

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 ...

This file type includes high resolution graphics and schematics when applicable. Automotive engineers are concerned with weight-to-power ratios when designing vehicles. While light-weighting is a ...