Wankel engines first saw use in production cars as early as 1964 — and not even in a Mazda, but rather in an NSU. That little single-rotor powerplant quickly evolved into the more typical two-rotor ...

Wankel engines first saw use in production cars as early as 1964 -- and not even in a Mazda, but rather in an NSU. That little single-rotor powerplant quickly evolved into the more typical two-rotor ...

We look at why Mazda introduced the three-rotor 20B Wankel rotary engine, and why it only ever saw service in the Cosmo coupe of the late 1980s.