I went to the Mazda Rev It Up event in St. Louis today, and I got to finally play around inside the car and examine eveything in detail. They had 2 of them there. A Winning Blue with all black leather, and a Velocity Red with black/red interior. I was fairly impressed with the design and quality of the interior even though these were the pre-production cars.

The only thing that I was kind of disappointed with was the lack of leg room in the back seat. I was thinking that it would be a little more roomy back there. I am average height (5' 11"), and with my seat adjusted about where it would be comfortable for me, there was only about 8" between the back of the front seat and the edge of the rear seat. Not that I am going to be hauling adults around in my back seat all the time, but I thought from the pictures I've seen that there looked to be a little more room just in case. There was plenty of head room in the back and the rear seats are comfortable. You feel like you are kind of reclined in them a little. Even though everything was fairly comfortable...I felt a little "trapped" back there. No room to slide, twist, stretch your arms, etc.. Definitely not a car to plan on hauling a rear seat passenger for extended lengths of time. It was pretty easy to get in and out of.

I was totally surprised at how quiet and smooth it is when it is running. The Mazda guy started it up for us, and at idle you can't even hear or feel it running while inside the car. He revved the rotary to 5000 rpm, and had people put their hand on top of the engine or on the fenders of the car. I literally felt NO vibration whatsoever and could barely hear it. Just a light whirring like an electric motor running. It was super smooth!

Well.....I could probably go on and on with my observations, but what I've listed above were about the only things that seemed to stand out to me as something that I was not expecting to encounter.

 

Was the engine smoother than the '91 RX-7 that you list owning in your sig line? How did the seat compare in comfort to the '91? I have at least sat in a '91 so the comparison would be interesting.

-H

 

My friend has a 90 RX7 vert. I can tell you that the 8 is smoother, but then again we are compareing new to old. The seats in the 8 are higher soo you sit looking over the hood a lot more then the 7. You get a feeling of being wrapped in the 8 because of the high door design. I thought the 8 seats were more comfortible and supportive then the 7.

 

When I went to Rev it up a couple of weeks ago, I had the totally opposite experience. I had my friend 6'3'' got in front and I got in back (6'1''). I had about 2'' between the back seat and my knees. I as totally amazed! Of course I had tried to get into the back of a Porsche 911 the previous week.

I personally think the back room and trunk space is more than expected.

Roachman

 

When you said 8 inches between the rear seat and the back of the front seat I was reminded of my Southwest Airlines flight on Wednesday. Pass the can opener please. I'd gladly sit in a slightly reclined RX-8 seat with 8 inches for a three hour "flight" than sit in any coach seat on any commercial plane. It is all about perspective. The RX-8 is a Sports car afterall--a Sports car that my wife likes too. Yep I haveta share.

 

it realy depends on how you configure your seat. if you like to sit WAY back and really reclined, there isnt going to be any room left in the back seats, no matter how tall you are upfront, or in the rear (banning extremes of course) but if you sit more "normall" there is PLENTY of space in the back of the rx-8
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Fisting fetish

 

Goes for most coupes too.

The worst thing about the RX-8 is the FEELING you get in the back seat. The room is not as bad as people make it out to be, it's just really claustrophobic back there so everybody feels like they are squished. I closed my eyes when I sat back and had reasonable room... and that was enough for me.

 

The biggest problem with the back seat is getting your feet in. Japanese people must have small feet because it is nearly impossible to wedge your feet in. I am 5'11" 230 lb and my friend was 6'2" 220 lb and we had to do some fancy manuevering to make us both confortable on the driver side of the car. The passenger side was easier by far. Still keeping from tripping yourself up is fairly difficult with your feet wedged in.

I tried to get my Grand Touring package changed to Touring to get rid of the power seats which I think is adding some bulk to the seat depth. The side airbags aren't helping either.

Anyway, I still have the Grand Touring package but I might be getting some thin Recaros to replace the front seats. As silly as it sounds, my mesh office chair is the most comfortable and thinnest chair I know of. It would be nice if they made something like that for cars?

As far as the engine is concerned, they actually let people test ride the car late Friday afternoon in Houston. Being the pre-production car, there wasn't any beep. I don't know how the pro driver knew when to shift. It was that silent. (The soccer moms in the back seat screaming made it hard to hear anything. They thought they were on a rollercoaster or something.)

-Mr. Wigggles

Ps. There weren't any test rides after Houston on the two Rev-It-Up RX-8s because the guy who authorized the rides got canned.

 

my main concerns going in were: 1) am i going to feel comfortable in the drivers seat? 2) what's the trunk space like? 3) will i really be able to put someone behind me and sit/drive comfortably?

1) YES. YES. YES! the 8 will be my first sports car so i knew that the fit would be more snug than i'm used to in my avenger. the car fits like a glove with the tiniest bit of wiggle room. more room than my friend's s2k, less than my avenger...PERFECT.

2) okay, the trunk is much larger than i expected. yes the opening is narrow but not nearly as much as people made it out to be. granted i'll have to buy smaller luggage for road trips but my concern about trunk space has been squashed. oh, and IMHO the pass thru is completely useless. i think they could've engineered a way for at least one of the backseats to fold down. but whatever.

3) YES...although i won't want to. i told all my friends that i will not be moving my seat up for someone to sit behind me. but...i did a little experiment anyway. i got in back then adjusted the driver’s seat to a position as far back as possible while still being comfortable back there. i got out, sat in the drivers seat and was shocked at how comfortable i still was...more comfortable than i am in my venge when someone is behind me! i think it's because the rear seats are buckets that sit low and angle back. (btw, i'm 6' 1", 180lbs)

during that experiment, i also figured out a way NOT to use the front seat as leverage to get out of the back seat. instead, i used the back or top of the door jam which seemed to work just fine. especially if u get your lead foot out first. this WILL be the way every rear passenger gets out of my car or they will be put to death!

that's it for me. for more comments check my post in the midwest forum.

vert, i got there around 2:45-3 and milled around the red one for a while then did the chalk talk, skills and driving competition (which i hadn't planned on doing...glad i did. soooo much fun!) then i spent another hour and a half with both 8's. too bad we missed each other...

 

Well, I suppose they could have, but it wouldn't have helped much with that V-brace behind it. You'd get a couple more oddly shaped pass-thrus. If I had a choice between freestyle doors with v-brace and 2 doors (or conventional 4 with center pillar and the coresponding weight and length increases) with folding rear seats, I would still choose the former.
So, what's the dealio - you don't want people touching your seat? Or did you notice something particularly disturbing with that egress technique?

 

I went again yesterday and messed around some more with the car. The Mazda guy there started it up again and let me play around with the stereo and see the gauges lit up. Totally cool daytime lighting on the instrument cluster!!

The stereo was......OK. I was expecting it to have a little more bass thump to it, but nothing an additional small sub would not fix. The highs seemed very crisp.

The other thing I noticed yesterday that was frustrating was that if you flip the manually-operated passengers seat forward to allow more room for the backseat passenger to get in, upon pulling it back it locked into place at about a 90 degree angle. It did not "remember" where it was previously set. Who sits in the seat like this??? This is definitely not something specific to the 8. I have seen many other cars with manual seats like this, but I have also had cars that "remembered" where the seat was previously set and clicked right back into that position which was nice. I have also had cars where the whole seat slid forward and then clicked right back into position where it originally was set. I will be putting my daughter in and out of the back seat, and this is going to be frustrating having to continually readjust the seat every time I flop it forward. Maybe on the production cars this will be different? The one nice thing I did notice was that there was a little nylon loop thingy that the rear seat passeneger could pull on that flipped the front seat forward.

Oh well....something I'll have to live with I guess.

 

even the MX-6 has a passenger seat 'memory'

 

i made the comment remembering that some on here had complained about the fact that the easiest way to get out of the back seat was to use the front seat as leverage...i guess because they thought that would be bad for the front seats in the long run.

i think herc mentioned it...too lazy to search for the thread right now.

 

Speaking as a Brit... What is a 'soccer mom' ?

 

That's the term for mothers in minivans who take their kids (and kids' teammates) to the recreation league soccer practices/matches. If the same were true in the UK they would be called football mums.

Here is a site that gives you an idea of the application of the term. And an ode to a Soccer Mom.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread.:D

 

That refers to some housewife type that drives around in huge SUVs, hauling many kids, junk, etc (IE half the soccer team and their equipment). It's also a negative, in that a noticable portion (not necessarilly a majority) are not capable of driving such big vehicles safely, and also pay more attention to makeup and cellphones than the road.

---jps

 

LOL well said!
best part about it, you said it in such a way that it made no referemce whatsoever to sexual inferiority or anything of that nature, which usually does occure when such a reference is made
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