The rotary motor to date has been one of those engineering feats that has almost always delivered more promise than anything else
In 2023, Mazda plans to start selling a rotary-powered car again. Gone is its penchant for attaching this moniker to something sporty. Instead, Mazda plans to use a small rotary to augment the range of a new small SUV battery-powered vehicle. One end of the electric motor will contain a small single-rotor Wankel motor, to credit its inventor, that will drive the generator and thus extend the range from 100-plus kilometres to something like 600.
The rotary motor to date has been one of those engineering feats that has almost always delivered more promise than anything else.
HITLER’S PART IN THE ROTARY MOTOR
Self-taught German engineer Dr Felix Wankel came up with the idea of an engine that avoided pistons reciprocating in cylinders in about 1924. In his words, it was “a new type of engine, half turbine, half reciprocating. It is my invention”. Wankel was a clerk at a printing works but obviously his mind was elsewhere. He was dirt poor — so poor, in fact, that he could
