RX8-79

Pics on page 2 now.

Changes:
Exterior-
New front grille design
New front/rear bumpers
New side sill garnish design
New black bezels for front/rear lights
New 16-, 17- and 18-inch alloys
Front fog lamps integrated in bumper facia
Available HID headlights
New Exterior colors (Dark Cherry and Tungsten Gray for Sports Sedan & Sport Wagon, Bright Island Blue and Tungsten Gray for 5-Door)

Interior-
New trim materials, including thicker armrest material
Door handles front/rear on passenger side
Dark Titanium colored center panel
New sporty seat design and new cloth fabric

Comfort and Entertainment-
Voice control navigation system available

Powertrain-
Refined 2.3-liter and 3.0-liter engines (V6 now rated at 215 hp, 199 ft-lb torque)
New five-speed Sport Shift AT automatic transmission for 2.3-liter engines

Chassis -
Retuned front and rear suspension bushings

Reactionary

The V6 HP rating was lowered. Not again. Unbelievable.

-=Rowdy=-

My previous 6s didn't feel like the advertised 220hp when I had it.

th1rd3y3

From what I recall they dyno much like the 8 too. It's about time they come with those options, especially the HIDs. The headlights on my wife's 6 (before we traded it for the STi) sucked *****. Also why they made NAV and HIDs available on the 3 before the 6 never made sense to me at all.

MikeW

Oh a loss of 2 hp, maybe the emissions was cleaned up a bit.
Did they add variable resonance to the V6, that would explain the torque increase.
and add refinement/mileage.
When will the new 3.5 come? The 3.0 still blows.
Why no 6 speed automatic on the 2.3?

khtm

meh.

crossbow

There isn't any engine changes supposedly. Mazda is just "re-rating" the engine based on its actual performance. Dyno's indicate we were overrated on hp (go figure right?) and underrated a bit on torque. Looks like the new numbers reflect that, though we still think its more like 210/200.

Thanks for posting the photos. Btw the Euro 6i gets a 6spd MTX. The US one doesn't though...sigh .

Audioslave8

Looks pretty much the same to me. Looks like the Shinka color.

brillo

Nice thing about the V6 is that its underrated on TQ and with a simple CAI, you can add nearly 20WHP. Now thats power from an intake.

DreRX8

Yeah--the Mazda 6s are nice--sidenote I did the 1/4 on Gran Turismo 4 with the Mazdaspeed 6 and it pulled a 14.2. Slightly higher than my pass in an RX8--so I kept running the 8 until I got a 14.0 pass.

RX-Hachi

Geez, I know GT4 is a good game, but is it so good that we'd use its time results as a real life indicator of performance?

BTW, was your GT4 RX-8 stock when you got 14 secs? The best 1/4 mi. I could pull with a stock RX-8 was 14.4 in GT4. But I wasn't trying real hard.

DreRX8

Well while of course you wouldn't use its results as real life but you can compare two cars in the same game In all honesty they are actually very close to real world projections save for the environmental/weight differences. Its a decent theoretical indicator--they are in a wide ballpark of actual performance.

mikeb

looks the same to me

KC_Prelude

what he said.

BlueEyes

This is how it should look.

BAMMM

RX8-79

After and before shots:

Zio

looks the same :x

BlueFrenzy

I see the difference ... the color!! Ha ha. Oh and fog lights.

I guess the new toys are kinda neat like the voice activated Nav. Wooo --> 18s!