First off, does anyone know of a good website that shows weekly or monthly car sales figures?

Secondly, I got an e-mail from a dealership where I inquired over a month ago seeing if I was still in the market since they stated they might be able to get me an even better deal than when I previously contacted them. No specifics $ amounts were given.

My guess is there are a lot of dealerships here in the Northeast that are looking at many more RX8s on the lot than they ever expected to have this late in the year. Most likely due to the word spreading very quickly about the 1st model year bugs that they need to work out.

Can someone validate or shoot down this assumption?

 

They're selling as they were projected to. See the media forum for more detail. Mazda is just cranking them out right now. And, dealers are always trying to sell more cars at the end of the year- October-December are notoriously bad for car dealers in general. As for the "1st year model bugs"- there aren't any more issues with the 8 than with any other new model car. You are on an internet forum, and those with problems are much more vocal than those of us without them.

 

Maybe if there was some advertising for them?

When the dealership tried to charge me for the "Mazda advertisement fee", I told them no way. I said I would have considered paying it if I had ever actually seen a single commercial for an 8 on TV.

 

An update to this thread after checking out the Media section as Elara kindly suggested. Here is what I found after following some links provided there for RX-8 sales:
Nov 2003 - 2087 units sold
Oct 2003 - 2510 units sold

 

Sorry, I should have posted links to those for you- I was at work and I'm not really supposed to be on the internet there.

 

Yea, what's up with that. This must be the smallest advertising budget ever for a new model. Maybe because they missed the spring/early summer delivery in 03, they're waiting for spring 04 for the big push.