How about this to help the torque...
 

A long time ago I owned a Porsche 911('84 vintage) that had been tweaked for autocross work. In addition to many other mods it had a trick rear-end that did wonders. Instead of hitting redline in 5th at the spec'd 149mph, it redlined at 120. As a result the car was ALL TORQUE ALL THE TIME.

And as I recall it only had 225 horses under the, ah, trunklid. I mean it went 40 to 60 in 2 seconds flat. And I could snap your head back at 90.

I had to back out after 120mph, but it was worth it. Well worth it.

The only down-side was I quickly learned what the weak link in the driveline was. If you laid on it too hard it ate U-joints like oreo cookies.

But if I could have that gearing on my RX-8... game over, pal.

Any thoughts?

RM

I do know that one trick, that I here is at least common on BMW E30's (325's from the 80's; I have one) is changing the differential for one with a different ratio. This reduces the max speed but increases acceleration/torque. Maybe this is what your 911 had and/or maybe this will eventually be possible on the 8 (?).

---my 8 is on order and hopefully will arrive in about 2 weeks


my 2 cents.

If you have an auto tranny, try using a high-stall torque converter. If set up right you can get tremendous torque on the low end without losing much horsepower on the high end. The modification is inexpensive compared to other mods. It's not uncommon to improve 1/4 mile times by a second or more.

How about different gears? I own a Mustang and a common mod for most Ford cars are to swap out the gears for more aggressive ratios. Granted you lose top speed and mpg, but you'll accelerate a heck of a lot faster. Are there aftermarket gears for Mazda vehicles?

The RX-8 is already agressively geared, on most Japanese sports cars like this, the transmission is proprietary to this car, so swapping out the gears isnt a simple task, also changing the rear end to a higher ratio is also difficult, Mazda's engineers are not dumb, they geared the car to accelerate quickly but still have good cruising speed, when you change the gearing to a higher ratio, like 4.10,4.33, or 4.56 your gas mileage will get worse as your RPM's will raise drastically at cruising speeds. A small change would make a good difference and not hurt top end, but would not be all that beneficial to make it worth while. A higher stall torque converter on an RX-8 will now help much, changing to a higher stall causes the car to instantly go to the RPM the stall is set at when you step on the gas, I.E. on a big turbo supra you might want a 4000rpm stall, when you launch, the car is instantly at 4000RPM and you have full boost, on cars with decent torque the stall is only raised to 2600-2800. Since the RX-8 doesn't have a big turbo to spool, a 4000rpm stall isnt going to be worth the money, and most people that bought the automatic probably didnt buy it to race anyways.

The rear end is already a 4.44. Show me another production car even close to approaching that high. You could theoretically go higher and go from stoplight to stoplight faster. I for one drive 25000+ miles a year and much of it is highway mileage so I still need to retain some degree of gas mileage. It isn't exactly fuel efficient now although I don't mind.

Interesting proposition, NAME THIEF!!! haha, j/k.

I'd gladly swap shifting at 7k for a little more torque down low....

~The Real RM :D