RE: Mazda RX-8 (R3) | Spotted

[otolith]

HorneyMX5 said:

How big are your children? I've been on holiday with 2 six foot friends who happily rode about in the back.

He's explained, it wasn't the space, it was the access for car seats, etc, which does make sense. There's loads of room back there, but the back of the seats is behind the C pillar (I'm going to call it that as if it had a B pillar!)

[Fastdruid]

Oiyou said:

I have never seen something rust like one a friend had. Shiney on the top and EVERYTHING else was crispy.

It's a Mazda. I don't think they're late 90's Mercedes Benz bad but we got rid of our 2005 Mazda 6 MPS due to rust and the MX5's are well known for it. At 10 years old it was getting MOT advisories for chassis corrosion and at 12 years I had to do some fairly major patching on the rear arches/sills after I stuck a finger through it as well as replace the rear lower arms. Some of it was bad design (trapping road silt in corners that would stay wet and corrode through) but there was a lot of rust appearing _through_ undersealed and clean painted areas which suggests the underlying metal wasn't as well treated as it should have been.

In comparison my Mondeo is now 16 years old, 170k, parked outside and has first had an advisory for rust this year (lower rear arms), the chassis however looks absolutely fine. I'd say its probably "as bad" now as an 6 year old Mazda. I wouldn't get another Mazda for that reason.

otolith said:

vikingaero said:

I know the rotary is the raison d'être of the RX8, but they should have offered a V6 alongside it. That would have meant that many many more of these cars would have survived.

Although you can shoehorn various piston engines into it aftermarket, I think the requirements on an OEM for things like clearance between bonnet and hard points would have dictated a different body shape.

If you want a Mazda with a bonnet line you can fit a piston engine under, there was always this:

We swapped from an RX-8 to the 6 MPS mainly for reasons of baby #2. While on paper they're very similar in performance they're poles apart to drive.

The RX-8 is a low coupe. It feels like you're going fast even when you're parked. The 6 is merely a saloon. It doesn't feel at all special. The 6 felt faster in a straight line because of the somewhat laggy turbo while the linear power meant the RX-8 didn't give you the same kick[1]. It wasn't half as much fun to drive though, you really felt the weight.

Angelo1985 said:

otolith said:

Angelo1985 said:

I know everyone here doesn’t care about its practicality, but the four seats and the suicide back doors were its selling point and the only way I could sell it to my other half. Until we saw one and realised the space in the back is tiny, too tiny for the offsprings. And that central tunnel…

I didn't have any offspring at the time, but I don't remember any problems carrying passengers in the rear, I always thought that the space there was pretty excellent for a coupe. Compare to something like a TT or GT86 only suitable for lower leg amputees?

ADULT passengers. You don’t have to go in the back and get the baby from the car seat, bending your back because the car is sooooo low

^This. We had baby #1 in the front in a travel system/base that meant it was easy to drop the car seat into. The issue however was that it permanently locked the seat belt and due to the design of the rear doors with the front seat belts in them, the high tunnel *AND* needing to move the seat to get into the back it basically "locked out" the rear nearside seat. That meant that when it was the pair of us one would be in the back rather than two in the front and it was absolutely fine for that (and the boot was surprisingly large, big enough to fit the travel system pushchair). Having a small child and needing to bend all the time while lifting at arms length however would have been a killer. Also despite the clever doors you need to open the front door fully to really access the rear which would have made any kind of tight parking a nightmare. Fine for adults, fine for older children, fine for one baby, not fine for a baby and toddler.

otolith said:

J4CKO said:

I can sort of see the appeal, I did know someone who had one, someone who owned a garage and he said it was a pain to own. I sold some tyres on eBay to a guy, he came to collect them an arrived in a red one, which before he turned it off he revved it up and bounced it off the limiter, I was a bit taken aback as it was pretty loud (had a drainpipe type exhaust on it and he apologized and said he had to do it if he wanted it to start again after.

There is a cold shutdown procedure which is only needed if you've just started it up and want to shut it down again without letting it warm up. He shouldn't have needed to do it if the car was warm, and if I remember rightly you raise the revs to 4000rpm (less than half revs) for 10 seconds and then turn off the key with the revs held. It spins down with no fuel injected, clearing the chamber of fuel. It's needed partly because they run really rich at startup - even richer in the EU than elsewhere, I believe, because of cat warmup time regulations.

It's rather annoying as the cat requirement means that it uses _more_ fuel. From what I recall the way the regulations are written even if you could pass the emissions standards without one you still need a cat so while the JDM models don't have one they needed one here and because the exhaust on the rotary is very very very hot it would melt the cat, so to cool things down they run it rich so mpg is even worse than it should have been.

I have to be honest that we did _worry_ about flooding it but it never happened, in part because we always did the rev to 4/5k for 10s and shut off if it wasn't warm enough *AND* didn't mess about moving it 5 meters off the drive etc unless we couldn't possibly avoid it.

otolith said:

Vsix and Vtec said:

it needed a litre of very expensive Mazda specific oil every 500 miles

Hmm, mine needed a litre of very cheap Mazda specific oil every 1500 miles.

I really didn't find it a major issue for oil, after the initial "check every second fill up" as Mazda recommended we ended up with just topping it up about once a month. Can't remember how much it used now but it wasn't expensive oil, just needed to be the correct spec. Admittedly for something that was _intended_ to use oil it was badly designed with the filler right in the middle and needing the engine cover removing! I really think rather than the stupid oil pressure gauge (that wasn't a gauge) they should have fitted a oil level sensor and gauge. Or just use a bloody two-stroke system with a separate oil tank that was easier to check and keep filled!

FWIW on the subject of reliability, *both* the "normal" piston engine replacements have had way more expensive engine issues and consumed just as much oil!

Worst aspect really was the fuel consumption (it really was dire), albeit not helped that it was so happy and *wanted* to rev I struggled to ever drive it sensibly every trip would be "I'll keep the revs low and drive sensibly today", 60 seconds later BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

I would love another one but I'd barely get a chance to use it and most of my use wouldn't be suitable.


[1] People are bad with "feeling" constant acceleration but quite good at changing rates of acceleration. Its why people mistakenly believe turbo diesels are faster than they are, because all the torque comes in one big hit. Personally I think they should have given it a bit more of a "powerband" at the top end which would have made it _feel_ much faster even if it wasn't.

[otolith]

Fastdruid said:

otolith said:

vikingaero said:

I know the rotary is the raison d'être of the RX8, but they should have offered a V6 alongside it. That would have meant that many many more of these cars would have survived.

Although you can shoehorn various piston engines into it aftermarket, I think the requirements on an OEM for things like clearance between bonnet and hard points would have dictated a different body shape.

If you want a Mazda with a bonnet line you can fit a piston engine under, there was always this:

We swapped from an RX-8 to the 6 MPS mainly for reasons of baby #2. While on paper they're very similar in performance they're poles apart to drive.

The RX-8 is a low coupe. It feels like you're going fast even when you're parked. The 6 is merely a saloon. It doesn't feel at all special. The 6 felt faster in a straight line because of the somewhat laggy turbo while the linear power meant the RX-8 didn't give you the same kick[1]. It wasn't half as much fun to drive though, you really felt the weight.

Oh, absolutely. But the point is that the RX-8 worked the way it did, from a packaging, styling, and weight distribution point of view, because it was built around a rotary. So they could have built a car around a V6 instead, the rotary would then have fitted with room to spare, but it would have been ordinary. If you wanted a piston engine, you could have had any other car on the market.

[unsprung]

reefshark said:

There really isn't anything else that the average person can afford that drives like an RX8, I think it surprised a few other people at a track day I took it on with its pace, obviously not on the straights but the amount of corner speed it can hold even in standard trim with road tires.

Great insight. Performance is more than sheer grunt; price point matters.

Major OEMs may not be listening, but the aftermarket and small manufacturers are, I suspect.

[smithers-jones]

Bought one new. Massive mistake. Utter dog of a car. Rotted for fun, unreliable as hell, a dealer taught to lie about them, and sold by 10k miles from new for 25% of what it cost. Bought another 6 month older 60k mile rwd manual German car which surprisingly wasn't rotten. That set me away from Mazda forever.

[Robigus]

Angelo1985 said:

I know everyone here doesn’t care about its practicality, but the four seats and the suicide back doors were its selling point and the only way I could sell it to my other half. Until we saw one and realised the space in the back is tiny, too tiny for the offsprings. And that central tunnel…

You'd think so, but my 6'5" son sat in the back comfortably. They're quite deceptive.

[itcaptainslow]

My parents had a first generation 231. Lovely looking thing in grey, and I remember it handling superbly, if a bit lively in the wet (I don’t think the OEM Bridgestone tyres helped here). Certainly sharper and more involving than the comparatively disappointing Nissan 350Z Dad also looked at.

They part ex’d it for a Merc CLK after three years, which was an absolute pudding in comparison!

[otolith]

itcaptainslow said:

My parents had a first generation 231. Lovely looking thing in grey, and I remember it handling superbly, if a bit lively in the wet (I don’t think the OEM Bridgestone tyres helped here).

If I had to pull out of a junction sharply, I used to turn the traction/stability off, because otherwise it could bog down. I did this on a large roundabout once, and forgot that it was off when I got a bit greedy with the throttle on the exit. It got a bit lively.

[N.A.R.T Spyder]

Pickle_Rick said:

5 words in I knew I was on to a loser.

LOL, yes I can imagine