I had the Pirellis M+S on my GTI. I'll never buy them again. VERY loud. Wore out rather quickly. (12k miles).

The Toyo Proxes4 are rather nice so far. They were really loud for the first 100 miles, but then they got quiet. They got put on 18 hours before our first bit of snow/ice, and even with the stickers still showing, they had decent traction. Plus they are cheap!

So far so good.

Brian

The Pirelli's have been positively reviewed by RX-8 owners in threads like this

In Canada, the Neros and the Proxes 4 are about the same price.

I found a good website for wheels. Not only does it have a great search tool, but it lists a lot of wheel weights. You can even search by weight, but again, it diesn't have everything so if you include weight in your search you're limiting your options.

http://www.wheelspecs.com/main/index.php

They don't sell directly on this site, but link to the mfg's site, and usually show if thre are any eBay auctions (not theirs) available. The one thing I do like about this site is it's search tool. Here's an example of a wheel with weights listed:

http://www.wheelspecs.com/specs/wheelmodels/289

I wish vendors used a good search tool and gave info like this. HINT HINT tirerack...

just my 2 cts worth on rims.

on my present ride, a honda jazz, i have tried super heavy el cheapo 16 inchers and then 17 inch magline forged. you can feel an obvious diff in terms of handling. the car has got an onboard thingamagit which measures fuel consumption. on the 16s i was getting abt 10'ish km/l as opposed to 14.1'ish km/l on the 17s.

the weight differential is abt 5kg per rim & tire combo. 20 kgs in total.