It seems important to get Mazda involved in this. I intend when purchasing to get their mpg figures confirmed and the keep a close tab as although the car is a beauty I cannot afford to spend that much money on gas using it every day. Especially as gas will nevr be cheap here, in fact the way the govt is taxing the driver it will become more expensive.

This may ruin a perfectly good car.

rael

 

I'm getting very spooked by this all of a sudden.

Can the 8 be converted to LPG ?????

AnilS.

 

I'm getting more and more concerned about this a d-day (delivery day!) looms larger. I do 138 miles a day and can't afford to get less than 22mpg. The problem as I see it is that I don't think we have any chance of getting Mazda to take the cars back if the MPG is poor. They dealer may offer to buy th car back but they will only give us part ex values on it.

I'd really like to see something in Mazda addressing our concerns on this issue, maybe one of the members with contacts (MarkW?) could emial them about this?

 

Why wouldnt they buy it back? They might take some convincing from a solicitor, but I can assure you if it is some way off what they sold it as, then they are going to buy back under the trades discription act.

 

I guess it depends on how you drive it.

If you want economy, dont go over 3k rpm type stuff.

But in the US/Canada, they stuffed the fuel map so it meets cali's emmisions (the CAT has to pass after 120000miles). So they ramped up fuel in low/high revs and leaned out the midrange.

From what canzoomer etc have seen, this is a quick fix which is likely not to have been done on the cars that were used to rate MPG in US.

The cars used for magazine testing were JDM 250bhp with 100octane fuel, not cali's 91 octane + US engine map.

Hopefully mazda have spent a little longer on our lowerpower fuel map that they did in the US, and this will show in fuel economy. Otherwise I may as well go for separate fuel/ignition control, engoy the extra HP and probably save fuel.

 

CHILL GUYS

Cheers
Oilman

 

Excuse oilman - he is in an RX8-test-drive-for-2-hours induced high.... (man!)

 

You should be able to get 22mpg (imperial) if you are highway cruising in 6th gear. I was able to get 25mpig doing that at 100Km/h (60mph) average speed on a 400Km trip. But any mixed city / highway driving will be cutting it really close to 22mpig.

If you don't redline the car and always drive in the 3000 rpm range you'll be fine. Also if it's not cold you'll be good.

 

Surely you mean 100mph ? Thats what I always do....

 

No 100Km/h speed limit is 80.

Canada speed limits are rather dumb, as are the US frankly, NY state is 55mph on an interstate!

Canada is such a large country it makes no sense to travel at 60mph to cross it, takes too damn long!

At 100mph you won't be getting 22mpg or 20mpg or 18mpg.

 

You can't quote the trades description act because they don't say that you will definitely get their published MPG regardless of how you drive the car. It is very difficult for us to prove that poor MPG is because of the car rather than how we are driving it. Unless you can prove that your RX8 can't get the published MPG then there is no way of forcing them to take the car back.


I'm hoping for at least 25MPG when motorway cruising at 80-90MPH and I think that should be a realistic expectation taking Mazda's published figures as a baseline (in fact I should get better using Mazda's figures but I'm being realistic!)

 

There was a car show, tried to reproduce MPG by adding just a gallon to the fuel tank and driving, as carefully as they could.

Cant remember the exact results but none of them done well.

 

It was Mike Brewer and the crew so must have been Driven. None of them got the published figures but IIRC they all got within 10-15% of the published figures.

 

Must ahve been a different one then, cause the one I saw, the best didnt get that close.

Was with old corsa type cars i think, 4-5 years ago?

 

Just to be clear, are these figures in US gallons? If so then I have to say they don't look too bad (multiply by 1.2 to get imperial mpg). Although as you say it doesn't match the official figures.

 

I'm in the US and so these are US figures. I've had my AT Winning Blue (GT package) RX8 since Aug 23. With 50/50 city/hiway I've been getting about 21+mpg.

I now have about 1500 miles on it. I took a 303 miles drive which took 12.5 USgallons to fill. That works out to 24+ mpg. It was 95% hiway driving with speeds mostly between 50 and 60mph with the tach at 2500rpm and the AC on. Most of the trip was on Canadian roads (a bit smoother than some in Washington).

Since the AT is "window stickered" at 18 to 25mpg, my RX8 seems to be right in there.

It seems that the consensus of those getting poor mpg is that the ECU may have been improperly set after being unloaded at port. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I've had no problems with mine.

Needless to say, I'm jazzed with my RX8. It's a head-turner where ever I go.

 

I think you guys should look at the mpg in Asia and particularly Australia rather than North America.

As RobDickinson said, we in the USA and Canada are unusual in having the ECU messed around with at the last minute for emmissions issues (apparently emissions have to be insanely low until the end of time over here) which caused the very rich mixture and probably has a huge impact on the lower than expected fuel economy. I have averaged 17.1mpg (US gallons) over 3000 miles, which is 2mpg worse than my huge 4400lb SUV that carries 7 and hits 0-60 in under 8 secs with it's 3.5 liter ULEV engine.

 

it's quite horrible.

im getting 15mpg on my first 2 tank of fillups.

and i am still breaking in the car = everything less than 3500!!

 

Quick.... someone post something positive on fuel consumption before I start looking at Audi A2's and rush out to hug a tree or two...

 

Had a quick survey on the Oz site and they seem to be getting between 12 - 14 l/100km, which comes to 20 - 23 mpg. Someone said they managed 10, so its possible to get better, and thats with reasonably fast driving. And they were using 95 octane fuel, same as here. I would guess thats what we can expect. I seem to remember Autocar averaged better than 23, and they can't drive.
JH

 

Looks like we'll get low 20's on average ... to be honest that what I expected anyway .....


Did anyone really expect much more?

 

erm........call me niave but yes, I'm expecting what the manufactures quote.

Combined (190) 26.2 mpg - (230) 24.8 mpg.

Why should we expect anything other

 

really cant understand why so many people on this list are so should i, shouldnt i, what if about this car. The fuel issues, are for me pretty much non issues. The Mazda figures claimed for the 8 WILL BE AS REAL as those claimed for any other vehicle. THEY are a representative guide ONLY, and i would only use them as indicative of what a particular vehicles potential is. Yes, u can possibly get more, much more generally expect slightly less. Our Vtec Honda dosnt get what Honda claims, and our Accord only got as much as our TII Rx7 when driven under similar conditions.

For me, if you are really that indecisive about a car, then why, oh why did u sign up so far ahead?. Why not wait and see it in teh flesh, and drive it before stomping up with the readies?. Me thinks many people who preordered just wanted the latest toy, and where looking more to be one up, rather than having any genuine desire or passion for what the 8 surely is, a great new choice in an over crowded market. I beleive it will do very well, and having owned 4 Rotary Mazdas, its none to soon to see the return of the Rotary in a great package.

Viva le Rotary!!

 

Cant speak for anyone else, but;

Every car I have owned has been close to the manufacturers claims for mileage. I didnt buy an RX8 for economy, but I expect it to be somewhere near the claims. Hopefully the economy of the European cars will not be as bad as those experienced by the US/Canadian folks.

I pre-orered the car on the expectation that it would be here July/August. That has slipped to November.

I think people are just pissed off with being messed about and constantly let down.

If the car is as good as it appeared in my brief test drive, I will be happy.

 

Mileage for me is not really an issue. This is really not the car to be buying if this is one of your major concerns.

Ive never got that close to getting advertised mileage on any car (heavy right foot :D), even when I had diesel company cars I was way off.

I would be pleased if I could average 20 or above from the RX-8, as this would be an improvement for me.

Cheers
Mark