You hear endless myths about the Mazda RX-7, from breathless praise of its “magic” to horror stories about blown apex seals.

The internal combustion engine, for all its mechanical sophistication, still runs on a 19th-century mechanical idea: pistons rising and falling, a crankshaft spinning, a steam-age architecture ...

The rotary engine was an unconventional design that delivered great power for its size. Here's what's good and bad about it.