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If you were one of those people who expected the new rotary-engined Mazda to be as much of a handful as the leery old twin-turbo RX-7, prepare for a shock. The new RX-8 is a bit of pussycat.

Gone are the sequential turbochargers (one force-feeding the other) that gave the RX-7 its light-switch power delivery. Banished is the rock-hard ride, along with mendacious chassis feedback that told you how brilliantly everything was going, just before spinning you like a pole dancer into the scenery.

Next April's RX-8 is a road-going version of what we've been teased with over the last seven years at the Tokyo Motor Show. Sadly the razor-sharp lines of the 1995 RX-01 concept and 1999 RX-Evolve have lost their radical edge. The RX-8 is altogether calmer, with a boot from a conventional saloon and a much thinner plan view. Inside, the concept cars' gorgeous, figure-hugging, soft-leather seats have been widened and hardened for hamburger-raised American bums and aluminium trim replaces the show cars' spars. The good news is that those extravagant wheelarches remain, along with slant-eyed headlamps and a heavily ducted snout. From the front it shouts 'performance and purpose', even if the rear says 'going shopping'.

A conventional road test would start under the bonnet, except the RX's engine sits so far back (to give optimum weight distribution) it's virtually under the front windscreen. The beer barrel-sized, twin-rotor, naturally aspirated engine now has a new design of exhaust port, said to give better control of exhaust emissions and improved economy, and the rotor tip seals now have a target life of almost 150,000 miles instead of 65,000. Two versions will be offered: a £20,000, 189bhp five-speed and a £24,000, 237bhp six-speed model. Mazda hints that a turbocharged version of the RX-8 is on the way and possibly a more sports-biased RX-7 replacement.

For now you get a four-seater with Europe's first modern, rear-hinged (aka 'suicide') doors. Mazda's claim that two adults can sit in comfort in the back is true, but getting in there is a tight squeeze, and once those doors are shut, you are trapped. This is because European legislation demands the rear doors cannot open before the fronts. With no quick-release handle to tilt the front seats forward, rear passengers have to wait in claustrophobic silence to be let out. To ensure that the pillarless RX-8 should be at least as safe in a side impact as a similar-sized four-door saloon, it has 'virtual B-pillars', integral crash beams, locking pins, special steel latches, and side and curtain air bags.

Front seat passengers are rather better catered for. The steering wheel only adjusts up and down, but the seats' every-way adjustment more than compensates for even tall drivers. The chairs are comfortable, with excellent side support.

The facia follows the pattern set by the Mazda 6, with heavily cowelled instruments, piano-black lacquer panels and high-tech circular displays for heating, air conditioning and the ancillary controls; attractive, yes, but a little too shiny and brittle for European tastes. The RX-8 is reasonably practical, however, with lots of storage spaces and a deep boot, just large enough for four adults' soft bags.

Spin the starter and you are rewarded with that typical rotary whirr. Blip the throttle and the rev-counter needle flips up, changing only the engine's pitch, not its volume. You need to use those revs, particularly when pulling away and through the gears, but the clutch and throttle electronics are refined and swapping ratios is no hardship.

Performance isn't a patch on that of the RX-7's, but the RX-8 can wear its sports car tag with pride, particularly the 237bhp model, which is livelier and easier to drive. Top speed is about 140mph, with 0-60mph in 6sec. The overdriven top gear is a tad superfluous, but is presumably there to improve the fuel consumption.

Mazda first signed a licence to exploit Dr Felix Wankel's rotary engine in 1963 under the leadership of the inspirational engineer Kenichi Yamamoto (now 78 years old and an 'advisor' to Mazda). The company spent $50million developing the engine, launching its first rotary-engined car, the Cosmo 110S, in 1967. All along the rotary has been dogged with problems of reliability and excessive thirst. Mazda's solved the former, but is still working on the latter, although one engineer did let slip earlier this year that typical EU combined consumption would be about 22.2mpg.

Ford's best set-up men have been working on the RX-8's handling and it shows. Don't expect kart-style, flat cornering, that's not what this car is all about. The chassis responds accurately, and while the body does roll, it is well restricted. The electronically-assisted steering is reminiscent of the Ford Focus; well weighted, and full of feel and life, but it's the fluidity of the handling that impresses most.

On a smooth track, the Mazda would be outclassed, but on real-world, opposite camber, slippery and bumpy corners, the RX-8 is an agile and super-fast machine. Stability control electronics don't induce the understeer of rival systems, even allowing a small amount of oversteer before reining things in.

With them switched off, the RX-8 is a flattering and controllable machine, with none of the unpredictable oversteer that made early RX-7s so terrifying. The all-round disc brakes are powerful stoppers, with good pedal feedback; anti-lock and electronic brake force distribution come as standard.

All the while the amazing engine whirrs away. Let the revs climb past the limiter's warning beep and it just keeps going; at 9100rpm it was my nerve that gave out, not the engine. It's a remarkable thing and perhaps we should be thankful that Mazda has persevered with it. On the 100th anniversary of Dr Felix Wankel's birthday, he must be rotating (if not spinning) in his grave with delight.

Few new cars have laid it on the line as frankly as the Mazda RX-8. It's tempting to think of it as a cautious diffuser of ideas, meticulously smudging the lines between saloon and coupe, purist sports car and executive smoothie. Its pitch smacks of contrived ambiguity. But it might just be one of the great doubt-free zones of recent times. If you buy an RX-8 you're not buying some bogus genre-bender, the reasoning goes, but an alternative mindset. Leave the ludicrous attribute-fusing to the 'motro' and oh-so 'spafe' Nissan Micra, the RX-8 really is radical: aesthetically, conceptually and propulsively.

And that's a stroke of genius straight off. The RX-8 isn't just the world's only rotary-engined car, it has no direct rivals at all. Does this make it an outcast? In a sense it does. But it also means it will be gatecrashing some of the best parties in town. Few BMW 325i drivers can have given a thought to what it would take to get them inside a Mazda showroom. They will now. Audi TT owners, too. And aspiring Nissan 350Z pilots. Even the hardcore hot hatch brigade. The RX-8 isn't mucho-macho, but how can you ignore 228bhp at 8200rpm, a 9400rpm red-line, a shape that makes even the Alfa 147 GTA's look straight-laced, and backward opening rear doors with more kerbside theatre than a row of Merc SLs in hood stow mode? You can't. And, at £22,000 for this, the more powerful of the two models, you shouldn't.

As we hinted at end of our megahatch showdown back in March, there's so much going on with the RX-8 it will probably star in a cross-genre span of group tests after it goes on sale over here in October. But, for us, it's pretty obvious where you start: with VW's Golf R32. Not only is the R32 the megahatch we like the most but, as with the Mazda, so much more than a one-trick pony.

Four-wheel drive projects its appeal deep into Audi quattro territory (damagingly for Audi because it outhandles the S3), its Phaeton-sourced 3.2-litre V6 delivers senior exec smoothness and flexibility in addition to heavy-duty stonk. And, of course, being a Golf guarantees oodles of sensible stuff to lubricate the mechanics of everyday motoring. It might not be the fastest or hardest of its type, but it is the most deftly multi-faceted and multi-talented. And that, along with its highly competitive £22,340 price, makes it a potent foil for the do-it-all Mazda.

It's the contrasts as well as the similarities that fascinate. Where the two come closest is in headline power, claimed performance and price. The Mazda's tiny 1308cc normally-aspirated twin-rotor Renesis engine (shorthand for rotary re-genesis) trails the Golf's snugly shoehorned 3179cc, 24-valve, V6 by just 9bhp, but needs to have wound on another 2000 revs before it's realised. The svelter build is the 1394kg RX-8's, though, handing it a power/weight ratio advantage of 166bhp/ton to the 1512kg Golf's 159bhp/ton. Perhaps more tellingly, the updated Wankel engine is absolutely blitzed for torque by the German car, developing its modest 156lb ft at a frenzied 5500rpm whereas the R32's thumping 236lb ft is on call at just 2800rpm.

Both have six-speed gearboxes with sprint-orientated gearing - understandably so in the Mazda's case to compensate for the paucity of low-speed grunt but with the R32 the extra ratio seems designed more to massage the already punchy demeanour of the barrel-chested V6.

Given all of which, they're surprisingly close over the classic benchmark sprint. Mazda claims 0-62mph in 6.4sec for the RX-8 which, if confirmed, will more than match the 6.4sec 0-60mph time we recorded for the Golf, though this was in the wet. Call it a draw. It's probably just as well factory in-gear figures for the Mazda aren't available; we can't help thinking they'd be murdered by the Golf which, picking just one example, tears through the 50-70mph fourth gear increment in 5.8sec. Flat-out on the autobahn, too, the Mazda's driver would have to watch the Golf's chunky rump and quad exhausts gradually disappear over the horizon: 146 plays 154mph.

But, as we've discovered so often, test track acceleration stats and the real world aren't the same place. Nor should figures be the defining factor in this clash. The real value of these cars is first and foremost embedded in what they do for the driver's feelgood receptors and satisfaction glands.

On the way from Bologna airport to our hotel by the sea in Rimini, it becomes clear that in any case there's not much in it for straight-line pace. On the autostrada, the Golf's higher claimed top speed gives it no appreciable edge in the 100-130mph zone. And on country roads, the Mazda's anticipated performance deficit seems more modest still. Partly this is due to the perfect matching of engine characteristics and the ratios of its six-speed gearbox. First and second spin up enough turbine-smooth thrust to slingshot the RX-8 right into contention with the raucous R32, despite the all-drive Teuton's bludgeoning torque and from-rest traction advantage, while third, fourth and fifth sustain a seductively silky surge that reaches out for the far side of 130mph. Settled in sixth, the almost electric hum of engine note merging with the modest levels of wind rush and road roar, it makes a superbly chilled cruiser.

Supporting this is terrific straight-line stability and a special kind of finely-tuned suppleness that smooths away fatigue along with the bumps, dips and ruts. This is not unconnected with the Mazda's 50:50 weight distribution and the fact that its twin-rotor motor is set so far back in the engine bay, well behind the front axle. The Golf's good for the long haul, too, but its suspension's more fidgety than the Mazda's and its engine considerably more vocal. It's a more sonorous, power-drenched sound, too, but the Golf simply doesn't have the serene mien or extraordinary, arrow-like security of the Japanese car.

Both cars have great gearshifts, though: low effort, rigidly gated and precise. The RX-8's is marginally notchier and, because of the sheer necessity to hook up the rotary engine's top end charge and keep it flowing, it gets more grief when you're going for it. Wringing maximum effort out of the R32 is less physically interactive, but its big V6's vivid throttle response and fat mid-band performance still has more built-in excitement.

On the squirling hillside roads, fifty or so miles in from the coast, the grunt/grip equations are tellingly resolved. The Golf plants

the larger acreage of sticky, ZR-rated rubber on the road, though both cars' tyres are the same 18in diameter. Super-stiff sidewalls, Haldex torque-apportioning four-wheel drive and sophisticated traction control systems breeze the responsibility of managing the power and torque on tap in the R32. In normal fast motoring, you never get even the whiff of an impression that the rear tyres are wrestling with those at the front over which should lead the way.

By and large, though, the Golf is outclassed when it comes to changing direction. Although the Mazda can't match the R32's remarkable grip and traction out of tight bends, it feels the more transparent, fluent and incisive car to drive through random twists, with crisper responses and a more intimate sense of control. The RX-8's power steering is lighter but even more direct than the VW's and brimming with feel, whereas the R32's can occasionally seem a little synthetic behind the reassuring weight at the rim. You really do get the impression that the Mazda's tyres aren't having to work so hard to contain the mass of its engine. It feels beautifully balanced and predictable.

Switch the traction controls off and the contrast between the two cars is intriguing. On extreme uphill hairpins like our photographic corner, the opportunity to generate some slip at the rear works to the RX-8's advantage, effectively neutralising what would be a tendency to understeer. The Golf will slide too, but it was more of a handful on the bumpy photographic bend, failing to settle into a consistent attitude as its four-wheel-drive system constantly scavenged for grip, aggressively shifting torque from one axle to the other. It felt better with the traction control left on. Both machines have impressively strong, progressive braking, though the Golf's ultimate stopping power and pedal feel shade the Mazda's.

Inside, the circular themes and soft, enveloping forms of the RX-8's cabin contrast strikingly with the R32's overtly angular architecture and the overall effect is altogether cosier and more cocooning. Which won't suit everyone, of course. The Golf is the pukka four-seater, the Mazda wings it. We can't imagine anyone wanting to do a long trip in the back of the RX-8 if the R32 was the alternative, no matter how novel the means of entry. That said, the Mazda's rear seats are actually more comfortable. As are its front seats which, while not as aggressively sculpted as the Golf's Recaros, offer just as much support and form part of a more relaxed driving position.

In the end it's a close call. The sophisticated face of superhatchdom as represented by the Golf R32 is a potent force at just over £22K. Too good for Audi's S3, too good for Ford's hardcore Focus RS and too good for Alfa's charismatic 147 GTA. It has real breadth of talent and convincing answers for every road, all weather conditions and a driver's fickle moods. It's powered by a truly muscular powerplant with a musical exhaust note and heavy-hitting delivery. You'd buy this car for the noise its engine makes, the grip and cut of its chassis, the tactile pleasures of its build and finish. It's still the most capable and desirable fast hatch on the planet.

But the RX-8 is sexier. Better looking. Quieter, smoother and more comfortable. Almost as fast. Better balanced. More fun to drive down a truly demanding road. And, perhaps because of all of that, more interesting. No, it doesn't have the Golf's macho bark. Nor its grip and instantly accessible grunt. If you're in a hot hatch frame of mind, it just won't do. But if you believe that the best drivers' cars are not necessarily the quickest, but those that blend dynamics and performance so seamlessly and cohesively that the driving experience is a powerful singularity rather than a collection of dazzling party tricks, the RX-8 hits the sweet spot with uncanny accuracy.

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