Lodes

This has been touched so many times but my enthusiasm needs to be satisfied with a new thread

It all started when Top Gear aired their show about the RX-8. At the time I thought it looked so quirky but I knew it was the car for me. After owning a Mazda 3 for 8 months, I was so dissatisfied that I had gotten the automatic. The car was awesome, but I could not live with an automatic gearbox that always chose the wrong gear and that made it such that I was always in manual mode and it would always take so long to switch gear once I told it to. So, my girlfriend made me test-drive the RX-8
I was in absolute love with it after the first test-drive. I was grinning the whole way through. Two-three weeks later in April 08 I bought my Velocity Red GT after test driving the BMW 135i, Nissan 350z, Honda S2000. The 135i almost won because the power delivery was so crazy but no car put a grin on my face like the RX-8.

This car loves the twisties and I am so lucky that every day after work I can choose to either take the Freeway or take the mountain road with very sharp turns. I am always so amazed how gracefully and how eager the car is to drive on these difficult roads.

Heck, I live in the sillicon valley. You see porsches every day, and if you want to see supercars it's just a 10-20 mile drive away.. People on the road have commented that my car is a mini-ferrari (from a guy in a previous-gen corvette with 430+hp, I told him to go test drive it ), a guy in a lifted truck absolutely loved the car even after he got to know how much hp we have , some mexicans talked to me in Spanish wanting to know more but I don't understand spanish, have gotten quite a few waves from various rx-8 owners in the area. Now, I am not delusional; once I was in Los Gatos and a Ferrari F430 parked right behind me and the rx-8 looked like crap compared to it!

I love this car and still grinning!

Spinning Sushi

iTrader: (21)

Remember folks, don't be a fanboi.

dozer

iTrader: (3)

the rx8 is the shizzznit

RoTaRyRx-8

^^ yeah, welcome to the club VR FTW!

Ross_Dawg

iTrader: (2)

Who carez about teh straight line speedz... we pwn in teh twisties

Kafka

Re-runs? That episode was a looooooooooong time ago man!

Regardless, I am proud to be a fanboi lol

mike[piston eater]

iTrader: (3)

fanboi's like to get touched

636

Meh

J wind

Whats the ol saying? you're preaching to the choir? lol anyways...

What twisties are you talking about anyways? I'm always on San Felipe and Highway 9. Stopped going to Hamilton for awhile now though.

shazy

Vr ftmfw!!!!! We r teh fastest!

dezodwest

Too bad cops think VR is the fastest too haha... I get pulled over all the time. I rarely get a ticket though because I don't do anything wrong. I think the car just stands out too much.

I love it though. I wouldn't want to drive anything else worth something similar.

Hidef1080

Yeah.... I like these RX-8 cars too.

I don't know about a mini Ferrari however.

More like a 944-S2 or a 968.
But you cats may be too young to know about that....

05TouringRX8

I'm not too young to know about the 944. There are absolutely no '8s in the area I live in so nobody knows what it is when they first see it. My neighbors were asking me if we had bought a Porsche and the first car I thought of when they asked that was the old 944. Of course the 944 was sort of considered a crappy Porsche from what I remember and to me looked more like the later model RX-7's than the RX-8.

My family pretty much enjoys driving something different than everyone else and my daughter is no different. One of the reasons she picked the 8 is because nobody else around has one. I'm from redneck farm country where if you drive a pickup, it's a Ford or a Chevy, mine is a Dodge. If you are a "soccer mom", you drive a Tahoe, Expedition, Suburban, or even an Escalade, my wife drives a Jeep.

We love our "ReX" too.

jmc23200

If you don't understand spanish, how do you know he wanted to know more about your car? He was probablly trying to carjack you lol. The car is fun and a major head turner. Keep it clean and its a good convo starter

alienRX8

I loved that top gear episode too and I watched it when I was looking for cars

I love my RX8 too. It is a pleasure to drive and it does get a lot of looks.

dmorales

RX8 is cool
________
Live Sex

MICHGoBlue

The Top Gear episode was indeed very entertaining and un-biasedly (sp.?) accurate.
But people seemingly to keep mentioning how the RX-8 ran the same time as the E46 M3.
While it is true, they physically both ran 1:31.8, the Stig that drove the RX-8 is much better than the older Stig (black outfiited).
Let's face it, there's no way the RX-8 would be even with a E46 M3 on any road course with the same driver.
I mean the new FWD TT beat out the RX-8 later in the series (I believe in season 9), and no way can a TT be faster than the M3.
One thing you can take away from the program is that it did run the same time as the 350Z on their rather twisty course.
I just wish they would test ALL their cars in the dry (They should move the test track OUT OF Britain!), and re-test all the cars that were driven by the black STIG.

Hidef1080

I didn't mean so much in terms of looks....
But you are 100% right about the gen 2 RX-7 which was targeted at 944 buyers on a budget.

Now when the 944's first came to light they were rather slow and based on the old 924's but by the time the 944 Turbo and the 944 S2's came out they were very good cars.


The 944 S and S2 became the “measuring stick” sports cars in the 80's [late 80's].
Hard core Porsche people hated them because the engine was in the front unlike their 911's.
The 944,s, 968's and 928's never got the respect they should have amongst Porschephiles because of the engine placement but the 944 S2 were rather good sports cars indeed.

Lodes

Yeah, I saw it sometime in 2006 with the wonders of youtube. I've been hooked to Top Gear since then. New season is coming up!

I work at IBM on Bailey Avenue way south of San Jose. So San Felipe is exactly what I am talking about. If I go the other way, I can get to Los Gatos through the mountains but I never take that route



I've had people mention that it looked like a porsche too. I think a lot of them mean that the car looks really nice and sporty and they compare it with what they know. At I did not buy this car because it looked like a porsche or a mini-ferrari, I bought it for what it is, a RX-8 It is nice to hear those comments though.

HAHA, I am pretty sure he didn't want to carjack... but they do look at my O.Z. rims quite a bit too much! lol

The RX-8 is definitely not the fastest car around and we all know that despite what Top Gear might show. Now I have not driven the last gen M3 but I drove the rest and to me they are simply not as connected, fun to drive and enjoyable to ride in as our car. Though I have to admit when the TT turbos kick in, it's a lot of fun (on a straight line haha).

05TouringRX8

I'm not a Porschephile by any stretch. What was the one with the V-8 that Tom Cruise sunk in Risky Business? I used to work for a guy that had one and he'd let me drive it on an errand every now and then. Very cool for a 19 year old I must say. My part time job before that was going with a group up to the port to drive imported Benz's of all kinds to a shop in PA to be upgraded to US Standards. Other than the radios having been stolen out of most of them, that was a fun job. I smile just as big when I drive my 8 though.

Kaiser bun

iTrader: (2)

My dad used to own an 82 rx7, and all of my mom's students thought he drove a porshe.

Hidef1080

That was a 928.

Great movie BTW! "Who's the U-Boat commander?"
I have not seen it in years....

I think it's safe to say we all like our RX-8's.

Hey, I say the RX-8 needs to be in a movie for goodness sake.

Kaiser bun

iTrader: (2)

its in tokyo drift... too bad that movie blows....

epikeddie

Having owned a 951 (944 Turbo) in the past. They're the cheapest, but still capable Porsches on the market!

That car handled like it was on flypaper. Absolutely glued to the road with its rear trans / front-mid engine combo.....it was a VERY balanced car on the track. Now....the one problem I had and why I got rid of it was the exorbitant maintenance costs that were involved with keeping the car. Water pump going out usually meant that all belts and what not were to come out which equals about $1700 from an independent Porsche specialist. Take it to the dealer and you're looking at $4000 in repairs.

I had that car when I was in college (UC San Diego) and that was the first car I got to take to the track! The Porsche Club in San Diego were filled with old guys, but they were very talented drivers and they really got me on the right track when it came to keeping the dangerous driving off the streets.

To this day, I still miss that car! The next car I got after that was an AP2 S2000 - which was respectable as well. But the brute force of that KO4 turbo kicking in on that 4 cylinder engine was purely awesome!

The Porsche Purists always gave me crap about the car though......although.....my car was still faster than a lot of those Carrera owners lol.

Chibana

I've been in red hot love with the RX-8 since the day it was released. I still have a hard time believing I own one. I almost bought a 2005 when I bought my Mazda3, but I knew that the cost of gas for my 170 mile round trip commute would kill me. Now I own both! The RX-8 is sexy, inside and out; it steers and handles like few other cars can; it has fantastic throttle response; it makes me giddy when I approach 9,000 RPM; it's relatively rare; and it gets crazy reactions from people everywhere I drive.