I have some 700 miles on my silver 8. No problems whatsover:
Gas mileage first tank 21 mpg, some 50 % highway.
Changed oil at 550 miles myself. Easy job. Took 2 quarts of castrol 5w20, 2 of 5w30.
AC works well here in hot NC
Engine seemed to loosen up a bit after 500 miles. Maybe just my imagination, but though haven't gone over 6000 rpm, it is very sweet at that number.
Am of course concerned about all the talk about reduced power, dyno results. However, if I had not heard that, I would have assumed the car has ample power. Damn but I hope Mazda was not lying re actual engine output! And as a first time rotary owner, I love that engine's dynamics and sounds, Do note that exhausts pipes at bottom are a little black/sooty. Perhaps that the overrich situation some have mentioned.
On cold startup, engine goes to about 2000 rpm until it settles down a minute or two later. I hope that's not resulting in any excessive wear before oil is fully circulating.
The RX 8 is a very nice car.
I plan to keep it many years. I hope I can get at least 200 k miles out of that Renesis.
Much thanks for all the helpful info these past months on the forum. Members and contributors have been great.

Wow 21mpg? I'm getting like 10 right now!

Yes. 21 mpg. Mind you, not driving it that hard. Martin

10 mpg!!! Dang, you do know you're not required to hit redline in every gear. :)

I was wondering if they were going to do that with the RX-8 on cold idle. The RX-7 (at least all the 2nd and 3rd generation cars) revs to 3000 RPM when the car is bone cold, runs for a few seconds there, then comes down to about 1500 RPM. As the car warms, the idle goes from 1500 to 750.

This system is called AWS, for Accelerated Warmup System. The idea is to rev the engine up to get the cats hot quickly, to reduce cold-start emissions. Mind you, the emissions tests you might do for the state don't check this - it's just a federally mandated emissions test for new car manufacturers to meet.

Among the RX-7 crowd it's referred to as the Accelerated Wear System :). Most people disable it. If the RX-8 only goes to 2000 RPM, that's MUCH better.

What is the startup/idle sequence for the 8?

Dale

Start car, idle jumps to 2000 for what seems to be a split second and trails off to 1000, very quick process. It idles around 1200-1000 for about 30 seconds or so though after.

The car is quite peppy in the morning ;)

No where near the racket and revs my FC and FD made.

I had two 1st gen RX-7's. I use to think that the techs set the idol a little too low. They would set it around 600-700 RPM I think. I use to like it up near 900 RPM.

Don't worry about running up at 2000 RPM until it warms up. Oil circulates quickly around the rotary. I bought a '84 GSL-SE with 100k, and ran her up to 180k before I sold her to a friend. And she ran just as good at 180k. And that's not parking her in the garage. I did change the oil every three months, but she wasn't pampered.

Now at 200k, she has a bad seal, but it was a great car that looked good and went a lot of places.

my 85 GSL-SE did that warmup thing too. 3000rpm. Probably all the rotaries with FI and a ECU did that. Probably a good thing because you sure didn't want the car to stall right after you started it cold. Sometimes, if you ran the car for a few seconds from cold, then shut it off ... the engine would flood. Starting after that was a PITA.

Why the mix?

21 mph in combination driving is great for the performance levels involved. Good one Mazda!!