Hello to everyone.

New to the forum.
I have been reading this forum heavily for the last week. Great job and very informative.

I was searching for a rx-8 and found one for 3.5k euro.

Today went to check its condition and made a test drive.

The car has 90k kilometers of 04. The owner was owning the car for just 8 months. I made him a lot of questions but he didn't know how to answer any of them. The car body had rust in the back lips and the problem didn't seem new since I think a paint job was done once (as if you can get rid of rust just with that ) .

The only Service that the owner did to the car was oil and spark plugs change. As I understood one of the spark plugs went bad and caused a flood. The car esthetics were as well not the best. Scratches and a small hit below the passenger door.
​​​​​​The car turned on fine while cold and hot. Also no exhaust smog noticed. One small thing as well I noticed is that the owner didn't have an oil bottle on his trunk. Nevertheless the oil level was fine. Was trying to check if there was any carbon buildup but couldn't determine. Also the tyres were a lot consumed.

Anw I thought to check further and when I connected the OBD2 scanner I got a P0420. This was a red flag for me. The cat seemed bad and the technical inspection was ending in 2 weeks.

This was a red flag and beside all the other imperfections I could tolerate but the cat was serious so I stepped back.

Also during the test drive the ball joints seem not the best since the wheel was free a little bit and the suspensions were strange (first time I drive a RX8 so can't really judge).

I asked the owner to make the technical inspection and then after if he still wanted to sell to call me.

In any case wanted to hear the opinion of the others here since this is not an easy car. I have owned a Mercedes C class before and never had similar trouble. Also in my region in Germany I don find much RX-8 but I really like them.

Regards and happy weekend