Mazda RX-8 Lawsuit??
 

So I got an interesting piece of mail yesterday and Im not quite sure what to think of it...I was curious if anyone else has ever received anything similiar. I got a letter from a law firm here in California concerning the Mazda RX-8 and its tendency to become a paper weight regardless of how well you maintain it.

Is their a class action lawsuit in the works against Mazda? It asked concerning the engine, seals, and even the clutch pedal failure. While none of this has happened to me...yet...how would some of my fellow rotary owners proceed who have had the misfortune of engine failure?

Be aware that a lot of these are solicitations from local law firms that are basically looking for a case. Kind of like those commercials that say "have you been using XYZ pacemaker and have suffered stroke, heart attack, etc, call now!"

Yeah thats what it felt like when I was reading it, the letter had an odd mix of official and junk mail...if that makes sense

It's the first I've heard of this.

Here is a Time Line of what will happen.
One person gets a little pissy and contacts a greedy law firm. The law firm sends out letters to other owners to get them to join in to a possible class action suit. There is a settlement. Law firm collects it's fee first. Owners get little.

I can visualize some poor legal intern having to make out checks to thousands of 8 owners like in The Jerk, "Pay to the order of..., one dollar and NINE CENTS!"

pretty much sums it up.

plus the car was warranteed for 8 years/100k miles on those parts. they don't have much of a standing since that is already an acceptable limit for most recognized automotive manufacturers. since that warranty is void for the cars past that mark they think they somehow have a suit. all they're going to do is waste mazda's time and resources to likely lose the lawsuit, if it ever even makes it to court as it sounds frivolous to me.

throw it in the garbage and don't play the "i'm a greedy lawyer" game.

if you don't want to assume the possible reliability issues, sell the car and move on.

I'm not entirely sure why so many people feel that when they make a purchase of something man-made that it will never have failures, never have breakdowns, and will last them until THEY decide to get rid of it.

Mazda's original warranty was that they couldn't be sure the engine would last past 5yr 60,000 miles. That's about industry average for most cars, longer than most sports cars. Porsche won't garuantee ANY part of their cars will last longer than 3yrs 36,000 miles. Tells you something?

it could stem from used cars, buying a car and nearly immediately being told "you need a new engine" after shelling out $7k+ would probably bother most people. but their focus is aimed in the wrong direction.

i've done used car inspections where compression was already below a reasonable limit and the cars were already sold...

It went in the trash the moment I finished reading it, i was just curious to see if anyone else had received something similiar. I truely have nothing to complain about when it comes to my car except for some shit customer service

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean that post to be targeted at you :)

Just the other people that trigger that sort of stuff.

In some ways I miss the days of one year warranties and the dealer doing all it could to blow off any warranty claims. After the year was up I'd just fix things myself, and not have the aggravation of arguing with the dealer.

What we really need is a class action lawsuit against lawyers who generate this kind of class action lawsuit.

Ken

i'd actually be in for that!

even if it was a penny for my aggravation and personal loss over reading the letters if enough people joined it could result in a chunk of money from them. maybe they would think twice about what jobs to accept. :)

it's crap like this that are the reason why insurance is reaching astronomical limits for just about everything.

I think there is a pretty big difference between making a car and promising that nothing will break within X number of miles, and making a car knowing that it will fail after Y miles no matter what.

Agreed, however it is a pretty severely distored sense of reality if you believe that the 2nd statement is what happens.

You clearly haven't seen enough episodes of Jesse Ventura's show on truTV. :)

Ken

Or that I know that "truTV" = "made upTV" :)

Its good for a laugh and to listen to hillbillys stumble over their words.

Please don't shake my belief that truTV is true.

If it's not all true, that means the people on "World's dumbest..." are not actually the dumbest around. There would then be dumber...:shocking:

Ken

The dumbest people probably didn't have a video taken of them providing the example... :lol:

it's obvious mazda can't encounter every scenario possible, which is why the engines have always had revisions.

such as the iron coolant seal walls breaking on the '86-02 13B engines, where the renesis revised to put them back into the rotor housings because it worked better long-term. it took 10+ years of city streets to find that problem and they addressed it regardless. then there was the revisions to the oil injection system on the S1 to S2.

bench test running an engine for thousands of hours can only tell you so much. a green light is flagged then the real tests and revisions go into play once the mules start running into problems years later.

/tinfoil hat

It's tough times. When it's tough times, all the lawyers, credit "repair" agencies, "fight foreclosure" shysters, etc come crawlin' out of the woodwork.

When times are good, their ads go away.

The only lawsuit that should apply to the Rx line would be one forcing mazda to always have at least one rotary car in production! :lol:

I wish we could have official published numbers from Mazda of the specific number of RX8 engines they replaced under warranty here in the U.S. That information would be more valuable - perhaps - than anything else regarding potential lawsuits.

Would be nice to get some money and maybe replace engines with low compression for free... :)

Ok, here's the deal. I'm going to initiate a class action lawsuit against lawyers who create class action lawsuits.

Since I'm not a lawyer I'm going to need everyone who wants in on the suit to provide me $100. Once we have 10,000 litigants I will immediately cease the suit and issue everyone a courtesy check of $1.09.

$100 for a suit ? sounds like a good deal !!!

That's a great idea! Do you accept personal check? lol

If you were a real class action lawyer, you wouldn't offer a check for $1.09. You'd offer a coupon for $1.09 redeemable toward their next lawsuit.

Ken

This type of lawsuit would only serve to discourage any further rotary development for the consumer market by Mazda. If producing a vehicle leads to frivolous litigation and huge financial losses in defense, production of said vehicles will cease.

tngeorge,

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is considered "fraud" and what isn't. Parts failure outside of warranty is never considered fraud, regardless of whatever result that may have. And Mazda already has public record about their steps to address engine issues.

As far as "shutting off in traffic", that is rather vague. Mazda shouldn't be held responsible for you running out of gas, for example. If you have a specific parts failure complaint, you should really note that.

:lol:

Hey, that happened to me!
My fuel pump went out when I was driving. Cut out 4 or 5 times on a busy interstate highway.
The emotional stress alone should be worth a couple of million.
I noticed an ad for a lawyer just popped up, I gots to make a call!

While tngeorge is barking up the wrong tree, your statement is not true. See GM ignition switch failures.

The GM ignition switch failure drama became conspiracy to commit fraud because GM knowingly concealed the fact that they were aware of the issue and did nothing to address it.

It wasn't the part failing that got them in trouble. it was how they handled it.

This.

The parts failure wasn't the fraud. It was the cover up of the failure. It's an extremely important legal distinction. Mazda has not "covered up" anything about this car's failure points.

They even extended our warranty.

All of these frivolous class action lawsuits are making money for lawyers and cluttering up courts for years that could otherwise be dealing with more important issues.
Very few regular people ever see significant damages.
I received a check from one that was brought against AT&T for overcharging their customers.
It was 10¢.
Ten whole cents.

now you know what owning a BMW is like!

This vehicle is indeed not safe...


...when it comes to the amount of joy it provides all of us who love it, even if is a complete bitch in terms of upkeep sometimes.

Not safe? I can only recall of a couple of people over the last 12 years dying in an accident. And we have had many very serious accidents involving members here.

Another great point. Phenomenal safety record.

Yeah and the ones who have died were in high speed accidents involving inanimate objects. The one that sticks out is the kids who hit the underpass pillar at high speed in Chicago.

There are plenty like this where people walked away. It has always amazed me.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...e37cb1797c.jpg

This thread reminded me. Who remember the one that was accidentally ran over by an M1 Abrams Tank?


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...9a2dc8a1bb.jpg


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...d8b75b7e27.jpg

I think the handling and maneuverability of it also make it safer.
I know I evaded a car at highway speed that swerved in front of me to avoiding hitting a deer that I'm almost sure would have resulted in me losing control of another vehicle.

Don't forget the SS that slammed into a fire truck in Florida. There was nothing left of that one and the kid walked away from it.

found some pictures of it.. it may have been a TG


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...e487b63686.jpg


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...36ad97b83b.jpg

Oh man, yeah I remember that one. and the fire truck looked barely damaged but it did like $50,000.00 damage to the fire truck.

No it didn't do that much damage, they just charged $50,000 for the damage there was.