I recently purchased my first RX-8 last week and it is a SE Shinka, now I've been doing a little research and it seems to me that there was some sort of fire at the factory where they made the '05 shinka's and a bunch were destroyed. I have been looking around and haven't been able to get a number from anywhere, but would anyone be able to give a rough number on how many '05 Shinka's will be available? I was told it is quite possible that this car could be come a collector. If anyone has some good info on this particular car that would be appreciated thanks.

 

What country are you from? I know there's only supposed to be 110 in Australia, as an example.

 

I am in Canada and all I could find is that there is currently 5 in Canada that have actually been purchased. But if you could verify this, that would be great thanks.

 

A few weeks ago I called Mazda to see how many Shinkas were actually produced, so I could find out what number I had. They told me they didn't know exactly how many were produced thus far, or how many they were still going to produce. I thought they were going to run them for a set amount of time, but since the fire, I gather from the way they were talking is that they will produce more, now that the factory is repaired. I know the run was supposed to be only 2150.

 

A friend of mind is a GM of a dealership. He set me up with a Shinka nearly $2k off sticker. He told me that dealerships in our area are getting 1 mt and 1 at each. A total of 2150 will be imported to the US. They are trading the cars between dealerships and for them to get one they need to really bargain. They will not allow test drives unless they believe you are serious. He told me that he felt the vehcile would likely increase in value because of it's limited run. However, he is in the business of selling cars....so despite our friendship I take it with a grain of salt. But, to date I have not seen another one on the road!

 

Production resumed in March, my factory order (non-Shinka) is on the water in transit to port right now.

As far as the Shinka (or any other model) it being a collector's item, I doubt it. There are still a bunch of Shinka's in our area that were built back in the fall and have yet to be sold. Sales of the 05's haven't been great. My guess is the demand may have gone down due to increased fuel prices.

It appears the effect of the fire was that some particular model/option combinations became hard to find. In my area, the NAV-equipped vehicles (particularly the black ones) completely disappeared by February. Lots of Shinka's remained available though - then again, they aren't available with NAV (what's up with that by the way?).

 

I doubt if the Shinka will become collectible. Collectible types from production models usually have significant differences (motor, horsepower, convertibles, etc) from their mass produced brethren. Cosmetic changes usually dont equate to significant value differences.