After a lot of thinking, looking, and test drives, I've decided to keep my 04 RX8 AT and not trade it in for the 05 Mazda 3 MT. While the 3 looks great, handles very well for a "compact" car, and is a manual trans, I couldn't let go of my 8, even though it's an automatic. The car is just too damn sexy! Now with the warm weather and sun I've had opportunity to really play around with the 8 and it's just so much fun. I just can't get over the amazing looks, great high rpm torque, and the handling (oh yeah, and taking a $5000 loss on the trade-in was annoying the crap out of me!). So, while I'll be the first one here to say that looking back, I wish I would have gotten the 8 MT, that's water under the bridge and I'll just suck it up for now. My next car will definitly be a manual and without taking away any thunder from the 8, I think that the Vette will probably be likely a contender (that is when I'm done with my residency and I'm making some decent $$ in a few years!). Thanks to all you guys for your advice and comments.

 

Why not just trade for an '04 RX-8 MT? It can't be that huge of a difference trading...

 

thats a great question, but whatever the answer glad to see a fellow cbus 8 sticking around

 

I looked into that but the only 04 left are used, and most of the ones I found were pretty loaded so my payments would have gone from $470 over 5 yrs to $500 over 6 years. I'm just not that excited to spend more and extend the amount of time financing the car. Like I said, it'll be fine for the next couple years and then I'llmove on to an MT sports car.

 

I wanted to try to trade my at for mt i dont think iw ould work out good though.Although my payments are already high.. i checked kelly blue book and the dealer told me to price it at fair it comes out to 20000 and that means i would be almost 4k in da neg and i know it would be really expensive to get a mt with gtpkg.

 

You are gonna lose a lot of money if you tried trading in your auto for a manual. YOu made a wise choice to enjoy it now, and look towards a future RX8 or another car. With the incredible deals on the rx8 also comes the horrific trade in value. As with trading in any car that is not very old you always take a massive hit, but with RX8 it's even more then usual. Glad you wised up and swallowed it, and you can enjoy your car for the time being until it becomes more practical and financially possible to upgrade. Good luck!!

 

That' why i'm waiting for the RX8 TURBO.

 

don't know when,s the rx8 turbo come out ?!!!

 

 

When the AT RX8 Turbo comes out...you can have it all baby...LOL

Taking a 5K hit is just not a wise thing to do IF you can help it. Glad to hear you kept your 8!

 

Me I'll just wait till I boost my A/T or trade it in on a M/T or rumoured SMG when that comes out--unless of course I am finished with dental school and am making some decent money by then--if so its Porsche M/T time.

 

I'm going to buy an auto vette in a few more years just to **** everyone off , all this talk about trannys, you'd think we were driving a chassis w/o a body or something :D

 

The only plus I see to trading an automatic for a manual is faster acceleration. I would havedone this a year ago (Ive had my automatic foralmost 2 years now) ifit werent for the fact that the manual is still considered a slow sports car. What Imean is - youre paying a shitload of money to get into a car that is still slower than all the other cars youd want to be faster than in your automatic (350z s2000 srt4 wrx evo etc) so what the hell is the justification? 1500 more RPM and 2 more gears aint worth $6000 more for me - sorry.

 

That's a great point! That's why in 3 years from now when I'm done with my prosthodontic residency and making the big bucks (hey, I deserve it, I've been in school forever!) I can go get myself a nice Lingenfelter 402 C6 Corvette. Now that is one hell of a car!

 

Glad you were only thinking of another 8!

 

i'm glad you chose not to downgrade or waste money, just stick with what you have and when you finish school, maybe a 3rotor will be out =)