Senseny

Damn, I knew the Elise was good, but I didn't realize it tested that well. You are right, there is no comparison with a stock FD.
I agree about the regaining glory, because if we don't I forsee a situation where in a little over 4 years I sell both of my rotaries and buy an Elise. Of course I would prefer it if Mazda has a "Lotus Killer" and I could stay with rotary power.

m477

Well, think of it this way -

Start with the RX-8 platform. Remove two doors and two seats, shorten the car a bit, and scrap the extra bracing needed when there was no B-pillar. Now you have a car that weighs ~2600lbs and still has 238hp. This car would only cost around $25k because of the diet, would be able to hang with anything this side of a Vette in a straight line, and out-corner and outbrake anything short of an Elise.

Now combine this with the expectation that the next RX-7 will be priced in the mid $30k range. That will give it nearly $10k in improvments over the car I just described! With $10k of weight reduction and engine enhancements, they should easily be able to produce a 2500lb 300+hp car!

Still, I'd love to see the stripped down $25k car. That would really be in the spirit of what the RX-7 was all about in the first place: smoking Z's and Porsches for alot less money. I know, I know, it'll never happen because it would be priced too closely to the Miata, but I can dream, can't I?

PhineasFellOff

I like what m477 is saying. And such a rotary coupe, whether it be an RX8 coupe or RX7, would together with the 4-door RX8 be a more significant threat to the G35/350z combo.

Skyline Maniac

:D LOL, why not a 2000lb car then? You can't shave weight that drasticly by just removing two doors and the backseat. The G35 has tons of sound damping material, two extra doors, back seats, huge trunk and other misc. luxury item and it barely weights 130lbs over the 350Z. You don't be able to achieve drastic weight saving unless you go with exotic materials (titanium, carbon fiber) or build a new chasis.

m477

A 350z/G35 sedan comparison would irrelevant as the 350z was made to be much more rigid than the G35 sedan, which came at a cost of weight.

A much more relevant comparison would be the G35c, which is much more similar to the 350z than the sedan. The weight difference there is ~200lbs. So, add to to that the weight of 2 doors, PLUS the weight extra bracing that was added to compensate for the lack of a B-pillar, and 300lb of weight loss is entirely reasonable.

PhineasFellOff

Come on, give him a break. 2850 lb is doable.

ONLY 130 lb heavier than the 350z? The 350z is already heavier than it should be.

murix

2850 is not too far off from the base model anyway. You are looking at around a 50lb difference. I doubt going to a two door model would actually lighten it that much over a base model.

RX8-TX

Remove doors, seats, and shorten the the chassis.

terbeaux

It is possible and Mazda has already built it. Its called the 20B triple rotor. It produces more torque too. Who said is has to be a renesis? I'm sure the engineers could get better than 8mpg out of it giving enough time and money. Question is does Mazda want to be king of the hill HP wise or sales wise? I think they care more about the $$. Time will tell.

PhineasFellOff

What I'm saying is Mazda won't be king of the hill sales-wise unless it does something about either the HP or the performance numbers. And the distance is about to increase.

zerobanger

Its never going to happen. The 3 rotor engine could not be a renesis and the renesis is the only reason the rotary is back. A 20B could not even pass US emission standards of the early 90's (its a japanese cosmo only engine).

There is no way in hell the 3 rotor engine could pass the current emissions standards and further more, it would get 8-10 MPG and mazda could do nothing about it.

The best hope is forced induction or larger rotors, sorry to rain on your parade.

Magic8

Infiniti is not in competition with Mazda. They are not responding to sales of Mazda, they are responding to the BMW competition. Look at what BMW (or for that matter Lexus and Merc) is coming out with in the next few years. Bigger engine, more horsepower. Infiniti is just trying to maintain and capture new market share from BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus.

Infiniti is making a good head way into the lux market and they want to maintain or capture new market share. I seriously doubt the RX8 was in the sights of Infiniti planners.


350Z is another story. What's the news on it's 2005-2006 upgrade? Personally I think the RX8 have other attributes other than HP that makes it copetitive with the 350z. I seriously doubt Mazda will do anything drastic unless the Nissan does something drastic. There are ways to increase sales other than improve vehicle performance, i.e. incentives and other marketing gimicks.

Shiri

It seems people would try to make a racecar out of anything.

The G35c wasn't made for that, and neither is the RX8. While the RX8 started of as an already light car, it doesn't have the power to run the G35c if they swapped engines. The VQ engine in the RX8 on the other hand may probably make it faster (and maybe even more economical?), but how that would affect the paperweight chassis is something else. It probably couldn't handle to save its life.

Here's another way of looking at it, the only way for the RX8 to improve performance is indeed to increase the engine capacity to either FI or SC, while maintaining a chassis rigid enough to deal with the excess power (which I think it could). However, this will be at the cost of handling, which even more money and research will need to be made by Mazda to co-ordinate these factors. The Z is heavier because it is stronger and was built to handle conditions beyond its current setup.

Otherwise, you could reduce the weight of the RX8 by investing in lightweight parts and remove unnecessary redundancy like paddings, side protection bars, AC and so on.

Mazda decided to go with the latter with their Mazdaspeed RX8 for some reason. I believe increasing the power would be too troublesome for Mazda which would also compromise what the RX8 was set out to be, lightweight with good handling at the more usable everyday driving situation (0-62mph, 10-40mph, 30-50mph etc...).

Some workshops here in Japan have already produced some FI kits for the RX8, but the problem is the RX8 is not selling, and neither are these kits (especially if they don't produce the kind of gains that other cars like the Silvia, GTRs, G35Cs and Zs are getting).

You people should already know that light cars would be advantageous in a lot of start-stop situation like autoX, and heavier cars would excel on mid to large size circuits where they could accelerate at high speed on the straight and turn confidently at high speed.

That is what separates the RX8 and the Z, each serves different applications. Now if the RX8 can compete with the equally light S2000 in autoX, I'd be impressed. Or, if the RX8 can compete with the Z on the big circuits, I'd probably respect the RX8 a lot more. The test that TOP GEAR did with both cars were in very different conditions, the Z drove in the wet while the RX8 drove in the dry. Heck, the NSX-R was around the same time (it also did it in the wet), that doesn't make both cars as fast as the Honda does it?

Right now, I don't think the RX8 was really made to be good at autoX or race circuits just like the G35C. Mazda had probably left it up to the aftermarket parts market to play around with the car and see what 3rd party companies can do to improve the power/handling.

Nissan cars are very receptive to mods, Mazda rotories aren't (sorry to burst your bubbles scorp76). At least not for now.

Shiri

And for the first time ever, I will have to go with ZB.

The 20B is an awesome engine, but in an ugly yakuza car (Cosmo), no thanks.

scorp76

I never said they were, and don't give a *** honestly, so keep my name out of your font.

PhineasFellOff

Shiri finally wrote a reasonable post. But I still think the Nissan is heavier than it needed to be.

PhineasFellOff

That's the beauty of Nissan's product "spacing." Obviously, Infiniti has its sights on BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus. But the link between the G35 and 350z also has allowed Nissan to take all other comers, including the RX8. Nissan's strategy has worked and is allowing them to effectively "cover all bases."

Shiri

Oh poor baby :D Talk about sour.

Shiri

I think the S2000 is heavier than it needs to be, so are the Porsches and Ferraris.

PhineasFellOff

You have said nothing there.

Skyline Maniac

"Some workshops here in Japan have already produced some FI kits for the RX8, but the problem is the RX8 is not selling, and neither are these kits.........."

The RX-8 is selling plenty well in US (abeit with some heavy discount) but it is certainly selling like a hot cake in Japan. RX-8 has a lot of aftermarket support in Japan, most of them focusing on the chasis, suspension but not so much on big FI.

Shiri

Ah, there's a lot of marketing but its not showing on the streets. I know about the bodykits and handling gears, there are some attempts on FI/SC mods though I'm not in the market for an RX8, I have come across quite a number of vendors selling them in the local magazines.

Skylines are doing a lot lot better, saw the most beautiful blue Skyline G35C with the VOLKS RAY TE37 wheels (18 inch). Perhaps there are more RX8 in your area (western side of Tokyo).

scorp76

Talk about gay.

chinx

this is a pretty good discussion. hopefully mazda is watching and reading...

remember, mazda people are not idiots. their marketing might not be as strong as nissan, but they're among the most capable engineering-wise. they're also philosophically different as a company. whereas nissan needs to be concerend w/ mass producing and selling as many cars as possible, sometimes at the sacrifice of engineering and innovations, mazda seems to prefer more of a niche route, going the lengths to churn out more enthusiastic, distinctive, and bold cars that aren't generic. who else puts hand-built engines in a mass-produced car? and that's why mazda always gets the vote over nissan from people like me. plus mazda is riding pretty high these days, and rx-8 is their trophy car, so they're not gonna leave it alone while the competition pulls away

PhineasFellOff

That's a good way of looking at it.