RX-8

RX-8 recalls

2005-07-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

Toyota recalls 345,000 Sienna minivans

Seat belts may not perform properly during a crash, regulators say. Mazda also recalls RX8s.
July 21, 2005; Posted: 11:06 a.m. EDT (1506 GMT)

DETROIT (Reuters) - Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. is recalling 345,443 Sienna minivans in the United States because of defective seat belts that may not properly restrain passengers during a crash, U.S. regulators said.

The vehicles involved are from the 2004-2005 model years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Separately, NHTSA said Mazda Motor Corp. is recalling 27,800 2004 model-year RX8 cars as cracks may occur in the ball joint socket due to improper forging of the lower control arm.
In severe driving conditions, the ball may separate from the socket and a loss of steering may occur, which could result in a crash, NHTSA said.

(Source: CNN.com)

Need for Speed Underground showroom

2005-07-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

"Need for Speed Underground" is a video game from Play Station 2. Players have the opportunity to modify the feature cars in their own preferences in this game. People are so obsessed with the game that they created a website for uploading their customized cars. Moreover, there's a ranking competition for these customized cars. Let's check out the RX-8 in the animated world~! Want to see more? Go to this site: http://www.nfsunlimited.net/underground2/showroom/

2005 Mazda RX-8 review

2005-07-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Click on the link below and you will find the 2005 Mazda Rx-8 review. It has some great pictures too~! The 2005 Mazda RX-8 is a carryover from 2004, so it basically carry the same style and features.

http://cars.ign.com/articles/633/633018p1.html

Is this the Guglielmi Motorsport Mazda RX8?

2005-07-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Is this the Guglielmi Motorsport Mazda RX8? (It just looks like another regular RX-8...) I have no idea, I only know that the woman on the left is Natasha Firman .

News on Mazda RX-8

2005-07-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

Set up a news alert in Yahoo News couple days ago and here's the first alert I got from them:

Natasha hopes for Snetterton repeat
15 July 2005 11:24
Natasha Firman is aiming for a repeat performance of her Snetterton debut tomorrow when she races on her home circuit for the second weekend this season.

Together with team-mate Mark Ticehurst, the Attleborough driver earned an overall victory and a class second place in the Britcar endurance Production S1 races at the Norfolk track in May. And she is looking to impress once again in their Guglielmi Motorsport Mazda RX8.

“Of course if we had a repeat performance that would be ideal but that's not likely to happen,” said Firman, who last year won the Formula Woman championship. “We've got to do a two-hour race and so far the Mazda has shown it's reliable and comes in at the end of every race which is our strength.

“In terms of our set-up we have fought hard to get a good one and we the car is neutral which should be good for Snetterton with its long fast corners and long straights after low speed corners.

“At Brands Hatch we were very competitive and we're coming to Snetterton feeling quite good about things.”

Once again she will have a large contingent of friends and family to support her, but insisted that the extra pressure of performing in front of her home crowd will not affect her.

“Last time my father (Ralph, founder of Van Diemen racing) did have a quiet word with me last time and said 'You are at your home circuit but don't get worried by your friends and family', but they made no difference because with so much going on and so much to learn that you do tend to forget about who is watching.”

The UK's top endurance race series Britcar will headline the opening day of the weekend, with some 30 sportscars and touring cars ready to blast off the grid in the series' 180-minute race.

The Britsports, Production S1 and Goldarts endurance series will support the Britcar event.

On Sunday, MotorSport Vision's Formula Ford 1600 Championship takes centre stage. The Pirelli Maranello Ferrari and the Ferrari Classic Challenge series are also on the bill for Sunday, along with British sportscar marque Caterham's top national series, the R400 Challenge, and the Ginetta championship.

I wonder how a "Guglielmi Motorsport Mazda RX8" would look like~!

RX-8 Transformer

2005-07-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/33kdy

Click on the above link and you will see a RX-8 turns into a robot....I know it sounds weird, but just take a look of it!

Aftermarket RX-8 interior

2005-07-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is unbelievable~! Look at the interior of this RX-8!!! Apparently, this car is from Japan, as the wheel is on the right hand side. Then, there's a LCD monitor at the middle console. Look at the trunk!! There's actually five LCD monitors!!!! The graphic on the RX-8 exterior is also very wild (although I don't really know what are they...haha) The modifications that people made to this RX-8 are awesome!!
(Source:http://www.rx8club.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=16023)

RX-8?

2005-07-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Can you believe this is a RX-8??? It is actually a RX-8--a Re Amemiya Super G conversion..this bodykit looks weird to me though~~ -_-"

(Source:http://www.rx8club.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=32374)

RX-8 with sliding doors

2005-07-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

This RX-8 is installed with R-magic body kit and sliding doors!!! It looks really cool; however; it would be rather difficult to open these RX-8's sliding doors because the RX-8 doors are extremely heavy.
(Source: http://www.trc-tuning.com/_products/_mazda/_rx8/_trc_rmagic_rx8_02f.jpg)

2005-07-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

I just found a news article from Google News that is about RX-8.

Mazda RX-8
by Jim Bray, TechnoFile Magazine
Saturday, July 2, 2005

Well, they certainly aren’t kidding.

I mean, Mazda’s "zoom zoom" slogan can be applied to the real world driving experience of such fun cars as the Miata and even the 6 sedan. But take it to its peak and you have to be talking about the RX-8, the latest generation of the company’s rotary-powered sports cars and an absolute blast to take out on the highway.

The gorgeous RX-8 follows on the heels of the lovely RX-7, but ups the ante over that car in several ways.

First, it features a new generation of the rotary engine, which Mazda calls "RENESIS." This power plant is remarkable: in the upper model RX-8, Mazda manages to get 238 horses and 164 lb.-ft. of torque from an engine size comparable to 1.3 litres! Incredible — and don’t let those power/torque specs fool you; they may not be as high as some of the competition, but this car is not a slouch in any way.

To put the efficiency of the rotary into perspective, Mazda gets 238/164 horses/torque from the 1.3 litre rotary and 220/192 horses/torque from its 3.0 litre V6 in the lovely Mazda 6. That’s amazing, and it makes me wonder why there aren’t more rotaries in Mazda’s (and other manufacturers’) inventory.

Another ante upper from the RX-7 is the addition of a rear seat, considered by many to be anathema to the concept of a true sports car, and two small, rearward-opening "suicide doors" (oops, I don’t believe we’re supposed to call them that any more; Mazda calls them "Freestyle doors") to facilitate getting into and out of the back seat. Decidedly un-sports car-like, if you’re tied to conventional wisdom.

Yet I defy anyone to say this little gem isn’t a sports car.

So far as the RX-8’s beautifully aggressive styling is concerned, Mazda says the design theme was "Athletic Tension," to give gawkers (and owners) a feeling of pent-up energy ready to be released, like an athlete waiting for the starter's gun. It works, too, and the gorgeous purple colour of my tester was a classy touch. Interesting, too, because depending on the light outside or the angle from which you looked at the car it could also look deep brown or black. All the apparent shades looked great, but that purple was particularly outstanding.

Mazda calls the RX-8 a sports car like no other, and they have that right, if only for the rotary. And the back seats.

Speaking of those back seats, Mazda has done a nifty job of not only facilitating ingress and egress to the RX-8’s twin rear seats, but those seats themselves are surprisingly comfortable and roomy. And since the front and rear doors open in opposite directions, there’s no big pillar to get in your way and the resulting opening is huge, considering the overall small size of the RX-8.
As a bit of an old fart, I still found getting in and out a bit of a challenge, but not nearly as much as getting into and out of the back seat of the two-door Acura RSX I drove the week before. And once inside, I had plenty of headroom, though at my height headroom isn’t a big problem anyway. But it was in the back of the RSX….

The beautifully appointed interior includes comfortable seats for all four positions. The front seats aren’t power operated (must be a "sports car" thing)) and while the steering wheel tilts it doesn’t telescope. But overall it’s a very comfortable place to do business. I couldn’t quite find a perfect driving position, mostly because I found the brake and gas pedal to be set a little too far forward compared with the clutch and this meant that I had to stretch my left leg when my right leg was comfortable, or get my left leg comfortable at the expense of a gas/brake pedal combination that was a tad too close. It wasn’t enough to spoil the fun, though.

The RX-8 is small and snug enough that everything the driver needs to reach, including stereo, HVAC and the like, falls nicely to hand. The design is quite good ergonomically, too.

The Bose audio system features a reasonably powerful AM/FM 6 disc CD setup. I thought the overall sound was better than average as far as power is concerned, but it was also a tad muddy; I usually run test cars’ stereos at their default settings to maintain "apples to apples" consistency among them, but the treble and bass in the RX needed to be cranked before I was reasonably happy. And while the system plays fairly loudly, it runs out of steam quite quickly on CD’s, well before "ear bleeding" levels (which is probably just as well, in some ways…).

The instrumentation is attractive and efficient, though Mazda has chosen to pair the analogue tachometer with a digital speedometer (undoubtedly so you know exactly how fast you were going when the radar cop pulls you over). I prefer all analogue, but the digital speedo does save real estate.

The air conditioning is a little weak, or so I found it during the very warm days of my test, which is kind of surprising considering the relatively small amount of space it has to cool.
What the RX-8 clearly isn’t is a "city car." Oh, it performs just fine in an urban environment, offering comfort and as much driving fun as you can have in rush hour gridlock. But take it out onto the highway, especially back roads with twisties and not a lot of traffic, and the RX-8’s true personality leaps forward.

This car loves to be driven. In fact, it demands it! Wind it up through the revs toward its astounding 9000 rpm red line and as the cool sounding engine works harder and harder it sings an ever-happier tune. If you think this is a neat sounding engine at idle, wait until it hits its stride!

Handling is outstanding. The rear drive RX-8 carves up the roads like the family patriarch working over a Christmas turkey. It not only goes where you point it, it almost seems to know where you’re going to point it. Part of the handling prowess is due to the car’s perfect 50/50 front/rear weight distribution and low centre of gravity.

The RX-8 boats double wishbone front suspension and a newly-developed multi-link rear suspension that does a nice job of striking a balance between sport and comfort, leaning as it should toward sport. Its brakes are a four wheel disc system with ABS and EBD (Electronic Brake Distribution). The GT model, which was the one I got to test, also features Dynamic stability control (DSC).

Steering is rack and pinion with torque sensitive power assist and it feels as if it were tuned to laser sharpness.

The RX-8 comes with either a 6-speed manual transmission with wonderfully short throws or a 4-speed automatic transmission. The 6-speed manual of my tester had a neat rotor-shaped shift knob, part of a rotary motif that’s repeated throughout the RX-8.

Safety equipment is about what you’d expect in a modern vehicle. It’s equipped with a dual stage driver's side airbag, a passenger's side airbag and curtain and front side airbags. Other safety features include an intrusion-minimizing brake pedal to help reduce foot and leg injuries in a frontal collision, a soft, impact-absorbing interior and "wheel stopper" reinforcements to prevent the front wheels from impacting on the cabin during a frontal collision.
I had been waiting impatiently for a chance to drive the RX-8 since it was first introduced for the 2004 model year. I’d read the reviews, seen the car in dealerships and on the road and generally lusted after it from afar. So when my turn for a week-long test drive came up I was salivating with anticipation.

But when I slipped behind the wheel it was as if I were entering the Twilight Zone; the drive home as I familiarized myself with the car was enjoyable enough, but I was surprised that it wasn’t the instant love affair I had expected it to be and resigned myself to the realization that perhaps we wouldn’t be a match made in heaven after all.

The RX-8 must have sensed that. Somehow, it convinced me to keep an open mind until I had a chance to take it outside the city limits and open it up.

The rest was history. We left the urban confines and headed northwest, through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and the day turned into to a bonding experience that has to be lived to be appreciated. When I got back, I didn’t care a whit about the clutch making me stretch my leg too much. I didn’t care about the anemic air conditioning or anything else. I was in love. Or at least lust. And the feeling lasted through the rest of the week.

Then I had to give the RX-8 back. Love/lust turned to mourning.

Zoom zoom. It’ll do it every time!

RX-8 in Wikipedia

2005-07-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that allow anyone to edit or add content. I found a page that talks about RX-8, and here's the link to the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_rx8

RX-8 with Mazdaspeed Bodykit

2005-07-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

Out of all the aftermarket bodykits, Mazdaspeed is the most popular one and my favorite! However there's a great price difference between the dealership and other providers.....so which one to pick? A cheaper bodykit from an unknown provider? Or a more reliable one from the dealership?

From the MazdaUSA:
A front bumper face costs $1,530
Rear under spolier costs $875
Side skirt costs $875
Full kit: $3,280 (excluded tax and installation).

From Extreme Dimensions:

Full kit: $999 (excluded tax, shipping, and installation)

(Source: http://tinyurl.com/8a7vk)

RX-8's accessories

2005-07-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

Really want to add some accessories to my RX-8, but they cost a fortune if you buy them from the dealer.

My wish list:

1. In-Dash 6-Disc CD changer--$509

2. B-Pillar Applique--$70

3. Fender Strakes (Set of 4), Polished aluminum--$250

4. Fuel-Filler Door, Pearl Satin--$108

5. Rear Spoiler--$385

6. Parking Brake Lever--$200

7. Gearshift Knob--$165

8. Pedals--$105

Total: $1,792

California Trip

2005-07-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

I spent my long weekend in California and I had so much fun in places, such as Disneyland, Universal Studio, etc. During the trip, I saw a bunch of luxurious cars near the Beverly Hills area . I saw two yellow Lamborghnini Gallardo parked outside a restaurant at the same time. Then, I saw a lot of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which is as common as seeing a bunch of Honda and Toyota driving around in the Seattle area. I even saw a Bentley Arnage! Crazy~!

(Bentley Arnage-on the left, Lamborghnini Gallardo-on the right)

And of course, I saw my all time favorite RX-8 during the trip~!

2005 RX-8 (Special Edition:Shinka)

2005-06-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Shinka" means "evolution" in Japanese

New features in RX-8 Shinka:

--Shinka badged B-pillar

--The Black Cherry Mica exterior. (The RX-8 Shinka is going to look black under darker lighting. However, it is hightlighted with a "black light" violet glow around the Rx-8's many curves)

--Parchment leather-trimmed seats

--Upgraded component materials

--Enhanced chasis and suspension tuning

Base MSRP: $32,470

My RX-8

2005-06-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

Here's my RX-8:

2004 RX-8
Color: Winning Blue
4-speed electronically controlled "Sport AT" automatic transmission with steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters
18-inch alloy wheels
with Grand Touring Package

Welcome~

2005-06-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first blog!

A blog that talks about Mazda RX-8. I will update consistently and provide car lovers and especially RX-8 owners with updates of the Mazda RX-8. Updates include news on the Mazda RX-8, RX-8's accessories, body kits, pictures, etc.

This blog will also serves as a forum; therefore, comments are strongly encouraged! RX-8 owners and other car lovers out there: feel free to leave your comments, and exchange ideas about the Mazda RX-8 in this blog.