Priceless RX-8 review
 

http://paddocktalk.com/news/html/mod...icle&sid=38384


This is great.... I don't think I have ever seen a reviewer go this crazy about a car before.... Lot of it is true, some is a bit over the top, but definitely a fun read that makes me glad to own an 8 haha...

Enjoy

too many '�'

Anyone know what causes those things? There seems to frequently be errors with apostrophes on websites.

Not a bad review... I was expecting one of those reviews where the person just doesn't get the car for some reason. The one thing that seemed odd to me was the complaints about the shifting. Finding gears in the 8 always seemed amazingly smooth and the clutch feel was quite nice. I pretty much learned on the 8 and I'd say I had it down pretty smooth within the first thousand miles or so.

If I had to guess he was probably not used to to the high revs and was shifting too early.

He also recommends getting an auto... :suspect:

Give him a break... he didn't get to test an auto. He might change his mind on that recommendation had he actually driven one.

I'd say the reviewers reaction is pretty normal. For the typical person who drives the typical car, getting into driving an RX-8 is like a jump into another dimension (of vehicle ability). Actions formerly dangerous/impossible suddenly become ordinary/uneventful. Add in the comfortable/silky nature of the car overall and.....well...we all know the rest.

Chances are he made the page in an editor like Word or something to that nature and then saved the file in HTML. By doing this it is using a character set that may or may not be supported by the browser. For example, if you ever notice in word if you do "hi - bye" that dash turns from a standard dash to a longdash. The naked eye cant tell, but when getting down to code level that "longdash" might have a different ascii char value. This is a common issue when developing windows console applications. Users will take input commands, copy them from an email or something, and paste them into their console, and it will cause a bunch of errors due to null characters.

The solution here would be for the editor to take the text, convert it to UTF format and then save it back to their webserver. Or you could simply open the text in notepad and resave it.

Hope that helps

he also said it wasn't honda smooth how odd
makes sense

"Over the top" is an understatement for sure.

And giving 8 points out of 10 for fuel economy is funny :)

I know... I had a Honda and it's shifting was total crap!

I understand what he's talking about with the clutch. It took me over a month to get good and shifting smoothly. I still have sometimes where I get the bobblehead motion between shifts. It's not so much the transmission as it's the way the clutch engages. I've been driving manuals for 17 years so it's not an issue of skill.

que?!

Shifting 1-3-5 makes putt-putting around town smoothly much easier ...

^^ yup, I find that if i shift from 1 - 2 at low rpms i get a rough notchy shift, so I usually like to rev pretty high in 1 (about 6 - 7) which is fine because I know the car likes it. To go easy on the tranny and the engine I usually like to go right to 3.

Yeah... I kinda stopped reading when it said auto might be better....

He probably copy and pasted the text directly from word into the HTML document.

If you are using firefox, go to "View --> Character Encoding --> Western (ISO-8859-1)".

"I hate to say this, but the automatic might be the one to buy" = oops number 1.

8/10 fuel economy = oops number 2.

But otherwise very keen and positive. Its a shame about the ' hell.....

great review, but get the autmatic....why? Ive owned a sabb and a volkswagan stick shift and the mazda was by far the best and after test driving lots of other cars in stick I loved the 8s short shifter it was deffinitly one of the most precise, but I guess thats just my opinion

Two big oops. I haven't even read the article yet and the author is already losing credibility.

Okay, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. The author thoroughly enjoyed the car, which is always fun to see. Ferrari? Who needs a Ferrari? Haha.

I noticed the date as well. Sounds like any other RX-8 enthusiast. It's great to read all positive remarks...maybe a bit over the top in some regards. It is sad that this kind of review was not more mainstream years back.