While not as nimble as a Miata, and not a convertible, the RX-8 certainly is the best value out there in a four door performance car, which is a great deal of fun to drive on twisty roads, and decently powerful.

The only real complaints I have about our RX-8 are the gas mileage (simply horrible around town--my wife gets 15mpg on the same commute on which she previously got 19mpg on our Honda minivan); fear of flooding (it has never flooded, but we don't take any risk of that, so it means that we can't just move it out of the garage and turn it off); and I don't think that its actual power is very close to what its advertised power is (it is rated at 238bhp vs. 240bhp for our S2000, and RX-8s tend to dyno at about 185rwhp, vs. 210rwhp for my S2000).

But it's a fine car, and a lot of fun to drive.

 

best thread ever!

 

Just one note about gas mileage of the rotary:

You do hear a lot of gnashing of teeth about mileage. But the key datum that I picked up from reading this site is that when you compare a rotary to piston engines, you have to compare against a *v-8*. A 4-stroke cylinder fires once every four cycles of the engine. So if you have four cylinders, you get one firing per cycle, and with a v-8 you get two. A rotor, on the other hand, gets one firing *every* cycle of the engine, and the RX-8 has two rotors, which, again comes out to two firings every cycle. So really, it's just not fair to compare mileage against anything less than a v-8, and when you do that, from everything I can gather, the rotary comes in as comparable.

And, of course, this was a major reason people stopped wanting to build rotaries during the gas crisis... they stopped wanting to build v-8's too!

Krankor
05 Shinka 6MT

 

Comparable how, in mileage maybe... But when you consider you'll probably get better mileage with a LS7 equiped vette than with an RX-8 I'd say it's a pretty weak comparison, especially if you're trying to argue for the RX-8. '

Argue that the rotary is light and compact, but beyond that the arguments get shaky. There is a reason why the rotary has a bad reputation, it's very sensitive to heat and also pinging and knocking. Just ask the hundreds of guys that have had their engines replaced in the RX-8 if they think the rotary is reliable... Overall yes it's probably reliable, but if I want something efficient and reliable as my highest priorities the RX-8 isn't anywhere near the top of the list. The RX-8 is still relatively new, but the amount of engines that have been replaced thus far certainly look like a red flag to me...

 

I've gotten 26mpg on the highway doing the speed limit(65) on cruise.

 

Your point? There are hundreds of others than get get over 20mpg on the highway. Is someone supposed to buy the car and pray they aren't one of those people that get 15mpg no matter how they drive?

 

I don't have a point but I think that the latest flashes have leaned out the mixture and improved mileage. I have no proof of this but I just thought I'd add my view point.

 

Anyhow, just providing another perspective. Sweet-tea, if you like the RX-8 I wouldn't let the rotary scare you off unless you need to get good gas mileage, or aren't good at keeping a tight maintenance schedule. Also, you may want to pass if you live in Arizona or Nevada :p

 

Hopefully that's the case, is everyone reporting better mileage with the new flashes? That's one thing I haven't been following since every time a flash comes out it's the latest and greatest thing going, then Mazda creates another one...

 

I do recomend getting your engine,tranny and diff oil changed after the first 2000 miles of break in.

 

Mine is an 05 and I have the N flash. I average 18-22 mpg in mixed city and highway. I can live with that. When I drove to florida, I got a consistent 25-26mpg all highway at 3500rpm in 6th

 

Man this post has really made me feel better about my new 8. I have read a lot of negative on this board that had me contemplating if I made a big mistake in buying this car. I am just glad to see that there are some good things to say about this car as well.

 

I didn't notice any difference other than throttle response feels better, but that could have been because they reset the ECU.

Anyway's back on topic, no rotor no motor I say.

 

3500 in 6th is like 65mph??? on the highway!!? I don't even travel that slow on regular streets. That's dangerously slow dude!

 

Who remembers:

"No pistons...no problems."?
:D

 

Just get it man, I was skeptical about it as well since my first choice was a S2000. Now i'm loving it, well except the fuel consumption...

 

It was at night and raining off and on and I was using cruise control. 65mph was the limit and I kept it within 2 miles from that. In Canada, Speeding is more forgiving but I've had some bad experiences in the states with the highway patrol so I don't take any chances.

 

Comparable how?? Just which part of "Just one note about gas mileage" didn't you understand?

And since you can't even do better than 'probably' better on a vette, I'd say that's pretty comparable. "Comparable" doesn't mean better, and it doesn't mean the same. It means similar, and I stand by it. A couple mpg one way or the other is noise.

 

I think we can discuss what it can be compared to until cows come home (and I think the cows made many roundtrips to home and pasture in many a thread on this forum).

Honestly, I compare horsepower versus mileage, because that's really the only thing that matters. My roommate's WRX STI gets better mileage with more power. Not much better though, and the way he and I drive our cars doesn't help.

Are these the same cars though? Nope, they are different in nature. Does the fact that there's a 2-4 mpg difference really matter, given the fact that both our cars' mileage sucks *** (15+mpg less) compared to Honda Civics? Nope.

So I think the gap between the rotary and the piston engines is narrowing now, but that was only given a lot of R&D by Mazda. Who knows what kind of mileage would rotaries have if only more manufacturers spent time researching and improving the rotary engine? (Or, heck, even if Mazda didn't have its "dark ages" of severly-reduced rotary research)

 

Yes they're comparable in mileage, but hardly comparable in horsepower, which is why I said what I did. If I'm going to get V8 mileage, I want V8 power <shrugs>

 

one piece of advice from a long time rotary owner:

STAY WAY WHILE YOU CAN!!!!!!!

:D


Rotary cars are very reliable it all depends on the owner, you can expect a few little thins from any new car and the RX-8 has had about the same as any new piston engine sports car, in fact my fd is much more reliable than my 1992 eclipse used to be. The problem with the fd was that alot of people started modifing them without really nowing how the engine works and blow a lot of them, when I bouht my fd it was pushing 15 psi without any ecu mod ( bad thing).

you cant comnpare it to a corolla it is not driven the same way, most people that buy a sports car beat the crap out of them.

I made my mind a couple of weeks ago im going all rotary, selling my suv and geting an RX-8 .

 

Bear in mind that Ike is not an owner, please. If you haven't figured it out yet on your own, Ike owns a WRX not an RX-8, so his opinions will take a different flavor than those of us owners. He's entitled to his opinion, but bear in mind he has never owned one.

On to the topic at hand: You will love the rotary powered car. There is nothing like it in terms of linear power delivery, sound, the endless rush to high-revs (it never seems to run out of breatheing room), the feel, the funky idle sound (sounds like George Jetson's car), the fact that you can talk about how cool it is (it ain't JAFPE [acronym: Just Another F-ing Piston Engine], etc.

Be not afraid of the rotary. Fear not its awesome ability to make you unable to resist its charms. Her call is like the Siren. Her strength is like the Amazon. Her ability to keep on going and going when all others have given up is like Jenna Jameson. [WHOOPS! Where did that come from!]

 

To add to the question of reliability.....I owned an '83 RX7 ( I named him Rufus )that had 120,000 miles on the ODO before I let it go. It carried me for 12 years without a single problem with the engine. As a matter of fact the older it got, the harder I drove it, and the harder I drove it the better it became. I miss that car. Anyway, I was driving past a used car lot and saw a winning blue '04 with the rotary accent pkg,. appearance pkg., and grand touring pkg...well quite naturally I had to stop and check her out. She was GORGEOUS! She had a black leather int. with blue inserts that matched the exterior paint. You know the two-tone similar the two - toned treatment Mazda offers. Well when I started her up, the engine idle was rough. It wasn't the smoothness that I was used to. I let her idle for a while to see if she would smooth out, but she didn't. What do you think that was all about? Gas maybe? She had 25k miles on her. Uhhmmmm the roughness made me wonder. There was no way I was going to buy it even if it did have a smooth idle because she changed her own gears instead of me doing it for her, and that's a no no in a sportscar.

 

sounds like a lemon-ish 8, stay away from that one!

 

I had a 2nd gen RX-7 nonturbo that had 136,000 on the engine when I replaced it with a turbo engine and drivetrain. The engine still ran. It went through alot and still lived. It had been seriously overheated twice. It had been run low on oil after an oil line broke. It even had the ceramic from 2 separate sparkplugs break off and fall through the engine. It still ran and passed emissions. I did pull the engine apart and it did have some damage but it still worked. I redlined that car constantly. I killed 2 transmissions and 3 clutches within the span of 6 months. I couldn't have been much harder to a car and it still ran. Great engine.

If you get into a turbo you might have some different issues. The counter to this is that you might have forced induction and have it detonate just once and it will blow. This just simply means tune it right and don't detonate. Bad tuning with forced induction makes bad things happen. Good tuning doesn't. Nonturbos seem to run forever and many 12A and 13B engines have simply gone long enough to around 250,000 miles that they just wear out.