How many pure sports cars do we make in America?

Well I know of at least 2, both of which are faster than Bugatti's.

http://www.shelbysupercars.com/

http://www.venomgt.com/

I don't see this as the 8 "losing" anything by the way, (it's never been a numbers car anyway, EVERYONE knows that) the article is just someone's opinion, and we all know what they say about those

 

Well, if you think about it, Americans race Nascar, Europeans have F1, GP2 and GP3, WTCC and all those stuff, Japanese have JGTC, Hill runs and even their highways are all curvy and stuff, what gives? :P

Honestly whoever the FFFFFF invented Nascar should've been executed.

 

Nascar wasn't invented, it was born on the beaches, dirt tracks, and back roads of America.

Besides, Americans race more than Nascar, there's Laguna Seca, VIR, Road Atlanta, and about a million other small tracks across the country with "curves" in them, hell, they're building a new F1 track here in Austin someday, there's a lot more to American motorsport than just Nascar for sure.

 

This is exactly what I've been thinking all along - even before i bought my 8!

I never understood why is it that Mazda never brought a turbo charged version of the RX-8 - even if it was a super limited edition with just a few units.

A turbo charged version of the RX-8 would have been perfect for the 40th Anniversary Edition or at least for 2011 as the "last" year of production of the RX-8.

Also, I never understood the reason why there wasn't anything special offered on 2011 - whether that was a turbo charged version or not. Common, make your last year of production something that people would find hard to resist!!!!

 

Why? Mazda doesn't have to money to do it right. Maybe it was Ford, but they lost their focus a little. I think the best thing that can happen with the rotary is Audis' development. The rotary needs new thinking from a different perspective. At my job we get other people to weigh in on things when we get too close to a job or have seemingly exhausted our resources, just to get that new way of looking at something. To survive, the rotary needs some really radical technological advances to get it up to par emissions wise, let alone performance and reliability.

Can this be done by Mazda? I don't think so. Will they keep trying? Of course, that's the samurai way, even if it's futile. If it's just up to mazda, they will keep putting out a new one once a decade which will have it's own reliability, emissions, mpg, and performance issues. Making it worse is they will not upgrade it cause they don't have the money. Once they get that they can't just put something out there and let it linger but must continually develop it, they won't get where they need to be with the rotary. You can't put rotary development on the back burner for almost a decade then think it's going to be successful.

 

well... rx-8s makes up to just a REALLLLLLLY small portion of all cars that Mazda sells. Why would they invest in R&D into sth that they KNOW not much ppl would buy? We should be greatful that they are even still making them.

 

i am European guy ,and i drove a lot of different EU cars...but the last one i owned was Audi A6 3.0 TDI quatro...and after this car i am never gonna buy the german made car again.i have Mazda Xedos 9 year 1998 ,(Millenia in Usa),which is big and comfortably as the A6,and i had no problems like i had with A6.but hey,in every auto-newspaper A6 is great car,but no one actually owns it and drive its for few years.Xedos 9 has one from many great engines made from Mazda KL series,and the ride is excellent.after the A6 is gonne ,i wanted nice looking rear drive sports car.so i tried everything from bmw to nissan.then the Rx 8 is nice looking,may i say pretty car ,not expensive,and the ride is great.and i dont care what others say,i know that getting in Rx8 after hard working day makes me come home with biiiiggggg smile on my face, and driving next to all ugly german cars,and seeing their faces,makes me happy.i hope Mazda will produce new Xedos 9 someday...Rx8 is gonna stay until end od my days in my garage.oil consumption,gas consumption,doesnt matter.

 

I call your infographic, and raise you this chart.

 

Has it occur to you guys that you are driving a car that basically hasn't changed in 2003? Prius picked up more power and improvements than the RX-8 during the same time span!

 

It doesn't really feel like it though, at least not to me. When I had my 94 Camaro, it felt like I was driving a car that hadn't been changed since the early 80s haha.

 

I have a BMW Z4 3.0. 230 hp just like my 8. The Z is fun to drive, but doesn't bring the same smile to my face as my 8. the low end torque is great, but nothing beats reving in the 7-8-9000 rpm range.

What I think is part of the problem is people just don't know how to drive a rotary. in the Z, I can shift in the 3-4000 rpm range and have fun all day. In the 8, you have to rev the nuts off of it to have fun. how many car journalists know the difference? How many Joe Public car buyers know the difference?

It is much easier to get in your Mustang GT, put it in "D" and stomp your left foot. The RX-8 is not for lazy drivers...

 

I don't think lazy has anything to do with it. I love the fact that the rotary revs high and is fun to drive but I still prefer more performance. Just as some muscle cars are all about low end torque the current rotary is ALL about hi end revs, and then it doesn't even make much power then. I could see if it all eualled out and there was enough hi-end hp and torque to make the 8 comparative performance wise with the average muscle car, but it's not. You could make a 100 hp engince that revs to 10,000 rpm but that won't make it a performance car. The 8 could use an engine that makes real power with it's vaunted revs. The 7 at least was as fast as the average sports car it was compared with in it's time.

 

89' 240sx that I Bought for $500, looked like **** but had some suspension work.


Damn I loved that car. It was slow, and noisy and I put a straight pipe in it. But it handled and did the job.

 

Most torque talk is nonsense. Average (integrated) HP/kW/thrust is what accelerates a car, not torque. Example, rocket engine dragster, 0 torque, (1/4 mile in 3.22 seconds at 396 mph). I note again, zero torque! Example, F1 engine, 740 hp @ 19,000 rpm ... with 204 ft-lbs at that output. Example, human on a bicycle from a near-stop, 0.5 hp @ 10 rpm with 262 ft-lbs of torque. More torque = better acceleration? Utter nonsense.

 

I am with you. There are too many people not willing to accept the flaws of the car. The car was good in 2003 when it came out, but it is awful in 2011 with the lack of engine improvements.

 

if you swap your "awful" for "outdated" or "non-competitive", then you'd be absolutely correct. i have grown to love my 8, but i can be objective about it. as a total package, it was barely competitive when new. time has only exacerbated that fact. all the handling in the world makes for bup-kiss (sp?) when there is no power to match and let's face it, it's in our nature to compare.

Mazda would NEED a complete package if it wants to be serious. it doesn't have a name like Porsche to fall back on, and before anyone starts pointing out that the street 911s would murder the street Rx-8s, remember that Boxsters are Porsches too, and then remember where THEY started. they handled wonderfully, but they had no power - even for their day! however, they had the Porsche surname to fall back on and now they are more complete. besides, the Boxster has evolved, while the Rx-8 has not. so i know it's not an exact comparison - just more of a point to be made.

the 8 started behind the 8-ball and for what it was/is, i think it's done better than it should have, given the obstacles it faced.

 

Yup, but then the lack of funds and the lack of forward thinking had always hurt Mazda. You can only ride on the "fun factor" for so long before your competitors surpass you. It's sad. The other problem is that the car built such a bad rep that I think it needs a complete reboot before it can be successful again. Remember gas was about $2/gallon when it came out in 2003, now it is closer to $4/gallon. Cars are making 100HP per liter while running cleaner and smoother than ever.

 

I think you could ask alot of people trying to turbo their cars. It's not a trivial thing. Once you turbo a rotary, problems that you have to keep in check become exponential. Although FDs were great cars, they did alot to tarnish the reputation of rotary engines. I wouldn't even say it's the fault of the motor itself but of Mazda for not educating the techs, customers and cheaping out on some vital small components.

The right answer would have been going 3 rotor N/A but keeping emissions down would have probably been a pain.

I have to be honest, I think Mazda did a great job with the 8. It's praised for what it was built to do. You can't really ask for more than that. I would definitely like to see a Renesis miata though. It's funny, the 8 always seemed like a big boys miata for me while not making compromises that other sports cars do.

 

You can't ask for better performance, better reliability, better mpg, better emissions, and an engine that doesn't need replacement before 70,000 miles? You really think that we, the purchaser can't ask for more?

 

In terms of performance, the only knock is power. Handling, and feel is amazing (hard to believe no one has matched it to this day for under $30k considering its basically an 8 year old car). What you love about the 8 is that its a driver's car. As far as reliability, Mazda DEFINITELY has to do better. Transmission, ignition coils, engine lubrication, climate control unit, etc. However, these are all fixable. In terms of reliability, its still a lot better than the FD, despite not having as much power.

 

Wife has a 128icab, nicest driving BMW outside of the M series in IMO, but I prefer my 8 easily. Nothing has prompted me out of the 8 yet.

Otherwise, some statements in this thread about the 8 (our engine needs replacement before 70000 talan7???) are not worthy of a response.

 

well... i did buy my car at 48k miles, and engine died at 58, 2nd engine died at 66k just last week. and i do premixes, oil changes, redline twice a day and all that crap... so.... yes, the car is kinda unreliable.

 

umm 370Z and even the 350Z up to a point. EVO and STI at slightly above 30K. It's kind of hard to compare skidpad and slolam times, you have to look at the whole package. You can't look at just one part of a woman's body right?

Regardless, the car would have been great if they had updated it in 2006 or 2007, but Mazda left it and now they are stuck with a car that is extremely outdated.

 

So why doesn't the Miata seem to be "picked on" this way? It's not very powerful or fast compared to other sports cars, yet nearly everyone seems to love it. Even the Mazda2, not very fast at all, yet I keep reading reviews were people seem to love tossing it around.

The basic forumula for the Miata hasn't changed much over the years either, probably because like the RX-8 it was designed to be engaging and fun for drivers, not to set 0-60 or track times or have "my car is faster than your car!" bragging rights.

Did the RX-7 maybe set the expectations in the wrong direction for the 8, where people expected another "japanese supercar?"

 

Because people as a whole are generally inconsistent, prejudice, gullible, close minded, narrow sighted, and unrealistic.







I do not exclude rotorheads from that generalization either.