NOTE: With this issue of HOT ROD, your Shop Series begins a slightly different and more comprehensive approach to the discussion of engine and vehicle basics. In the coming months, you'll find a frank ...

With all the recent emphasis on electric vehicles, we often overlook the technology that still powers most cars on the road today. The internal combustion engine (ICE) has been at the heart of the ...

Soon after the internal combustion engine was invented, technological advancements steadily improved its efficiency and boosted its power output. Increasing displacement—or, in simpler terms, ...

We all know how a conventional internal combustion engine works, with a piston and a crankshaft. But that’s by no means the only way to make an engine, and one of the slightly more unusual ...

A clean-sheet engine design always merits a second look, and when that engine is a high-tech unit designed as the volume-seller for a global conglomerate that’s been in rough straits, it’s worth a ...

In case you missed it, the automotive industry has been on a steady trajectory of internal combustion engine (ICE) downsizing for years. Battery-powered electric vehicles may capture most of the ...

Generally, combustion engines follow a standard principle of operation founded on the premise that the crankshaft spins clockwise (as seen from the driver’s seat). That’s how the powerplants are ...

3D printing is a powerful tool for creating all kinds of stuff, but it has its limits. Hobbyist-focused machines that dispense melted plastic through a nozzle can only make parts that are so strong.

There are many aspects of a car's engineering and design that us enthusiasts can fall in love with and obsess over, though maybe none more so than their exhaust systems. Sure, the exhaust system is an ...

Wankel rotary engines, typically but not exclusively found in Mazdas, certainly lean on the "quirkier" side of modern powertrain systems, made quirkier because most rotary-powered cars on the road ...