Editing Felix Wankel (section)

==Career==
{{More citations needed|section|date=October 2022}}
[[Image:DrehkolbenmotorDKM54.JPG|thumb|[[Wankel engine]], type DKM54 (1957)]]

During [[World War II]], Wankel developed seals and rotary valves for [[Luftwaffe|German air force]] aircraft and [[Kriegsmarine|navy]] torpedoes, as well as for companies such as [[BMW]] and [[Daimler-Benz]]. After the war, the region was [[French occupation zone in Germany|occupied by France]]. Wankel was imprisoned by French authorities for several months in 1945 and his laboratory was closed by French occupation troops. Wankel's work was confiscated and he was prohibited from doing any more work.<ref name="a">"The Rotary Club", Don Sherman, ''[[Automobile Magazine]]'', February 2008, pp 76–79</ref> However, by 1951, he got funding from the Goetze AG company to furnish the new Technical Development Center in his privately owned house in [[Lindau]] on Lake Constance. He began development of the engine at [[NSU Motorenwerke|NSU Motorenwerke AG]], leading to the first running prototype on 1 February 1957.<ref>[http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,459789,00.html Wankel-Jubiläum: Warten aufs Wunder], ''Der Spiegel'', 21 January 2007.</ref> Unlike modern Wankel engines, this 21 horsepower version had both the rotor and housing rotating.<ref name="a"/> His engine design was first licensed by [[Curtiss-Wright]] in [[New Jersey]], United States.

On 19 January 1960 the rotary engine was presented for the first time to specialists and the press in a meeting of the [[Verein Deutscher Ingenieure|German Engineers' Union]] at the [[Deutsches Museum]] in Munich.  In the same year, with the KKM 250, the first practically applied rotary engine was presented in a converted [[NSU Prinz]] automobile. At around this time the term "Wankel engine" became synonymous with the rotary type of engine, whereas previously it was referred to as the "Motor nach System NSU/Wankel". At the 1963 [[International Motor Show Germany|IAA motor show]] in Frankfurt, the NSU company presented the NSU Wankel-Spider, the first consumer vehicle with a rotary engine, which went into production in 1964. Great attention was received by the NSU in August 1967 for the very modern [[NSU Ro 80]] sedan, which had a 115-horsepower engine with two rotors. It was the first German car named "Car of the Year" in 1968. 

In Japan, the manufacturer [[Mazda]] licensed the engine and successfully solved various problems relating to chatter marks.<ref>Yamamoto, Kenichi (1971). Rotary Engine. Toyo Kogyo. Page 60-61</ref> The engine was used successfully by Mazda in several generations of their RX-series of [[coupé]]s and sedans, including the [[Mazda Cosmo]] (1967), [[Mazda Familia#R100|R100]] (1968), the [[Mazda RX-7|RX-7]] (1978–2002), and the [[Mazda RX-8|RX-8]] (2003–2012). Mazda has planned to reintroduce the engine, albeit as a [[range extender]], in their [[Mazda MX-30|MX-30]] R-EV in 2023.<ref>[https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42433264/mazda-plug-in-hybrid-mx-30-rotary-engine-announced/ Mazda Rotary Engine Is Coming Back on an MX-30 Plug-In-Hybrid], ''Car and Driver'', 9 January 2023.</ref> Mercedes-Benz fitted one of its [[Mercedes-Benz C111|C111]] experimental models in 1969 with a three-rotor Wankel engine. In 1970, the next model had a four-rotor Wankel engine and could reach top speed 290&nbsp;km/h but never reached production.

Wankel became a success in business by securing license agreements for the engine to manufacturers around the world. By 1958 Wankel and partners had founded the Wankel GmbH company, providing Wankel with a share of the profits for marketing the engine. Among the licensees were [[Daimler-Benz]] since 1961, [[General Motors]] since 1970, [[Toyota]] since 1971. Among those who paid higher fees for Wankel RCE rights was a state-owned engineering firm of the [[East Germany|DDR]]. Royalties received by Wankel's own company from licensing were 40% at first, which later dropped to 36%. In 1971 Wankel sold his share in licensing royalties for 50 million Deutschmarks (adjusted for inflation, approximately €87m in 2021) to the English conglomerate [[Lonmin|Lonrho]]. A year later he got his Technical Development Center back from the [[Fraunhofer Society]] research organization. From 1986 the Felix Wankel Institute entered cooperation agreement with Daimler Benz, which covered the institute's operating costs in return for research rights. Wankel later sold the institute to Daimler Benz for 100 million Deutschmarks.

In the context of the developed Wankel engine, "rotary" is something of a misnomer. The Wankel principle applied only to a "rotary piston" and not to the engine as a whole which was a stationary assembly, unlike [[rotary engines]]   employed in WW1 aircraft in which the entire engine rotated about a fixed crankshaft.