Any of you guys lucky enough to have your name already down for your RX8 but thinking about pulling out because of the delays, negatives reviews or anything other reason should think again. (IMHO)
Last weekend was the MX5 Owners Club National meeting in Edinburgh. We held a trackday at Knockhill race circuit in Fife and were lucky enough to get two RX8's with professional driver to give demo laps in one of them. WOW!!! I am sooo impressed with the car.
The car was totally stock setup - Normal tyres, Normal brakes, everything as you'd buy it from the showroom. It was absolutely storming on the track , survived the abuse it got and still looked magnificent both inside and out. The tyres were pretty worn by the end of the day, as you'd expect, but the brakes didn't fade off and the handling was first class. The driver (Don't remember his name) was taking people out for laps every 5/10 mins so the car didn't get much rest for over 4 hrs. He really threw the car 'round the circuit and i've never been driven quite so fast before. To guage it's performance, I was hitting 80mph at the first corner in my mx5 while he was getting over 100 mph at the same point. Even against lighter supercharged and NO'xd MX5's he was quicker 'round the circuit. I can appreciate that he was a professional driver which should make him quicker and better than us, he still rated the car highly on a personal viewpoint and thought that Mazda had really hit the mark with it as a whole package.

It was my first chance to lay hands on the real thing and I must say I want one even more now.

 

welcome to the forum, let us know it you decide to get the '8

sounds like that was the same car I got to drive in stirling (My dealer said it was it the silver one they were using on the track?), tyres looked new to me, replaced after 4 thousand miles?

considering the abuse the car has had it still drove like a dream on normal roads, the drivers seat was starting to look a little beaten on the bench bolsters but apart from that it was fairly mint, (but in need of a wash)

I did notice that it had transparent plastic sheeting at the corner of the rear wheelarches (where it meets the door) I wonder if they are prone to picking up stone chips?

 

I wonder if this is the same silver one (black leather, sat nav, strakes) which is also on the Mazda Mag, and was in TW Whites the other day - one of the alloys was looking a bit scuffed round the edge too!

 

I think this was a titanium one - It looks too dark for silver on the photo's i've got of it. Reg no was GK03 NFF. They also had the Winning Blue (My personal fave colour) Pre prod car that everyone appears to have sat in and played with. It was on track on Friday 12th Sept so I wonder if you saw it after or before it got thrashed on the track.

Looks like it's gonna be next year befoer I can afford to make the switch. The anticipation will probably kill me but at least I will get to see what happens with the first wave of UK cars in the mean time.

 

odd, it was the sunlight silver one I drove, and they definitely said that it was just back from knockhill (they had it on the friday too, but I couldn't drive it then because of a crisis at work)

hopefully it will be worth the wait for everyone, as a consolation you should remember that the '5 won the best handling car of the year award. (see elsewhere on the forum for details)

EDIT: could well have been the one from wt whites, but i didn't make a note of the reg number, beyond noticing that it was an 03.