I was bored at work so I went to the Mazda website and did an inventory search of all Rx-8s in a 150 mile radius from zipcode 48309. I did this b/c I wanted to see which colors ended up being the most popular. While I was at it I also searched for tranmission types. I then put together a quick excel file to display the results. It is neat to compare these results with the projected results displayed in polls conducted earlier. It is also interesting to compare how the opinions of forum members and the general public differ.


earlier polls:

Color Owned July 19 2003 (http://rx8forum.com/poll.php?s=&action=showresults&pollid=140)
Color Liked August 4 2003 (http://rx8forum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8074&highlight=poll)
Color Ordered July 4 2003 (http://rx8forum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6076&highlight=poll)
Early Colors February 16 2003 (http://rx8forum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2598&highlight=poll)
First Color Poll October 4 2002 (http://rx8forum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=924&highlight=poll)
There were other color polls but most were redundant.


-JiM

Excellent work - interesting to see red is so popular (at least in Mazda's opinion) and that 20% are autos. Can you do this for the whole country?

Remeber the cars on the lot are not sold. The cars that have been sold are not represented in that data set. Essentially you have the residual cars and an allocation of estimated demand.

Still, it's interesting to see what cars are on the lots.

Remeber the cars on the lot are not sold. The cars that have been sold are not represented in that data set. Essentially you have the residual cars and an allocation of estimated demand.
Good point Kuf... It also includes cars that are ordered and not yet arrived.

Although this is still a decent projection of color breakdowns
perhaps this also shows that not as many people are buying the red as projected?

Excellent work - interesting to see red is so popular (at least in Mazda's opinion) and that 20% are autos. Can you do this for the whole country?

If I could get the data I would... I'm still bored. :)

--JiM

An old sales manager of mine used to say "it's all about charts and graphs!" As I agree with that sentiment, I really like your Excel work!

Since you are still bored, who about comparing the stats from that last pole with the stats on the inventory? Graph them side by side by color. This might show how well Mazda anticipated demand for the different colors (with many caveats of course).

You the man!

<p>Very interesting data! To me, most surprising piece of info is the auto vs. manual distribution. <font color="#FF0000">81%</font> for manual is very high by US standards. Last weekend I wanted to test-drive BMW 330ci, so I stopped by one dealership and discovered that did not have a single 330ci with stick. Well,
it's just one dealership. Having seen your charts, I decided to check BMW inventory for comparison. bmwusa.com does not seem to offer a search for new cars inventory but one can search for pre-owned cars. My search for 3 series coupes produced the following numbers (in 500 miles radius around Boston): 85 cars with auto (<font color="#FF0000">63%</font>), 49 cars with stick (37%). For sedans the ratio was 60 and 40% respectively.</p><p>One of the explanations could be that current distribution for RX-8 is influenced to a high degree by the volume of driving enthusiasts who pre-order their cars.</p>

Red: I too am looking at slightly-used 330's as potential replacement of my 8. I have found about 20 automatics for every one manual. Perhaps the demographics (read "traffic") here in SoCal has people opting for the slushbox. It's interesting to see an apparently higher ratio of sticks there in MA.

interesting
seems right according to all the posts on the forum from owners