RX8Club.com - Why not to test drive the RX-8

Ahhh, the thrill of the new car search. Reading other new buyers' stories, poring through the industry mags, deciding on new or used, manual or automatic, and everything in between. Like most major purchases, the anticipation and research is usually more enjoyable than actually signing your name on the dotted line and taking on the burden of an instantly depreciating chunk of metal.

I'm currently 26. Every car I've owned in the past 10 years was over 10 years old, cost less than 1000 bucks, and had over 100k miles, including a '75 yellow VW Bug, '74 Dodge Dart, Geo Metro, Plymouth Colt, '93 Pontiac Bonneville (which was pushing 260k+ miles), and the current money pit, an '88 Audi 5000 formerly owned by my sister that had been t-boned and then partially repaired by me. None of them had working AC. Most of their radios were nonfunctional, or partially functional if I managed to hit the train tracks at the right speed and trajectory. The Dart had an 8-track player. I owned 2 8-tracks, Kiss - Greatest Hits, and The Best of Sha-na-na.

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Woo. You can imagine how the chicks just flocked to those sweet sounds in High School.

How to get out of the crappy used-car treadmill:

Step 1: After college and several years of bouncing between mediocre jobs, land yourself into a good-paying steady career.
Status: Complete.

Step 2: Realizing "Hey, I can actually afford a car that isn't a fucking piece of shit!"
Status: Complete.

Step 3: Deciding what factors were important to me:

Under $20k if possible, $25k at most, with comparatively good insurance rates.
Above average reliability, or at least something with a good warranty.
Responsive handling, strong acceleration, comfortable ride, good gas mileage, interior space, interior quality, etc -- naturally, something that had exceptional mileage and a quality interior could still be considered against a car that was more fun to drive and had sex appeal but wasn't quite as economical. This would prove to the be the hardest part, trying to quantify whether 28 MPG was better than a <6-second 0-60 time is tough.
Something fairly unique without needing to be riced out or obnoxious.
The approval of random strangers on the Internet. HAhahahahaha just kidding. However I do have a father who has a fanatical devotion to American Cars, and friends who have told amazing tales of their travels to the magical land of Japanese Cars That Never Need Repair.

So I hauled out Consumer Reports, Car & Driver, and The Internet, and compared Civics and Fits and Accords and tCs and Corollas and Mazda3s and 6s and VW GTIs and Jettas and Spreadsheets and Numbers and blah blah blah.

Then I went for test drives. I can read a car manual but I can't test drive the internet.

Test drive 1: Jetta. "Hey, not bad! This car doesn't emit a large cloud of smoke when I step on the pedal! We're moving up in the world!" However, I can't spooge in my pants just yet, there's a lot of other cars out there to try out.

Test drive 2: Civic. "Hmm.. this is a sensible, fuel efficient car. But despite its space-age technology I can't get over the feeling that it has Downs."

Test drive 3: Mazda3. "Now we're talking! This is more like what I'm looking for in terms of handling and responsiveness, but the cheap-feeling interior just isn't exciting me."

Ooh wait, what's that over there in the far corner of the Mazda lot?

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Hello beautiful!

Three 24-hour test drives and several weeks later, this is now sitting in my driveway:

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No, not the old gardening lady, the black car in front of her.

So this Tuesday I bought a new 2005 RX-8 6-speed MT w/ Sport package for $22k + TTL with $0 down, which for me works out to about $430 per month. Insurance was exactly the same as if I was driving a Civic or a Mazda3. Hooray for being over 25 with a squeaky clean record! Having the RX-8 classified as a 4-door car helps too.

Yes, it prefers premium gas, though I've read various reports that say 87 octane will either destroy my engine or make it run better. Who knows, I'll give the cheap stuff a try one of these days. Yes, the mileage is significantly less than an econobox or sporty sedan (I've averaged 18 MPG after the first two fillups). However even with a lot of hard driving, I'm paying maybe $50 more per month for fuel compared to a sedate, civilized, gas-sipping Civic.

A small price to pay for this much fun.

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My salesman Rick (with Sesi Mazda in Ypsilanti, Michigan, definitely one of the best dealership experiences I've had, I can't recommend them enough) lives next door. I actually didn't find this out until I went in and he saw the address on my drivers license. Any time I need service done he has volunteered to loan me his Mazda6 for the day and drop the RX-8 off in my driveway when the work is complete. He even treated me and the girlfriend to a dinner at a decent local restaurant and a complimentary quart of oil. No, he didn't come along with us. No, the oil was not served with dinner.

It's hard to describe what made me choose this over all the other options out there, except it was just the best fit with what I'm looking for in a car at this point in my life. I am a little lucky that the girlfriend has the very "utilitarian" Honda CR-V for the transport of any large things that won't fit in the 8's trunk or back seats. It's an absolute bargain for the class of cars its in, and is rare enough that I've seen maybe 2 other RX-8s on the road in the past 2 months.

Or maybe it's that it takes me back to when I was 10 years old and used to ride along in the low-slung leather seats of my dad's self-built GT Bradley kit car:

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As an amateur pilot, his came complete with custom gauges from a Beechcraft Bonanza airplane, including altimeter and horizon-gyro, and the super-sweet gull-wing doors. I get a little bit of that unique feeling without having to put in the required hundreds of hours of work.

And what's this?

http://random-m.com/images/183463382_RX-8 Dash 4.jpg
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http://random-m.com/images/1796830109_RX-8 Dash 6.jpg

Renesis Rotary. Now we're talking. I love this thing more every day.

(Crossposted from somethingawful.com Forums, but I figured you guys would appreciate this little story as well).