Hello everyone. I am a newbie. I am coming from several Mustangs and other cars but really enjoy the RX 8 ALOT!!!! I have a question about them. I have 14450 miles on mine and it's a 04 model with everything and yes the 6 spd. Do I really need the extended service warranty the dealer wants to sell me or not. How dependable are the cars over the long haul. I do most a mix of driving normal but love to rev this thing is is great. Not looking to do many if any mods yet to it. Just have had the car for a few days. Any help is great and appreciated. :D

 

IMHO, Take the money you'd have spent on the extended warranty.. put it into a money market.. then when repairs start coming up use that money to pay for them.

(When you figure out the deductable on most of the extended warranty's, unless something major.. i.e. driveline failure... occurs, the warranty will never pay for itself.)

When my dealer tried to sell me a warranty they were between $2500 and $8000 depending on deductable, length, etc. Just not worth it. (The $2500 was _ONE_ year of additional coverage..)

 

Personally, I never take the extended warranty offered by a dealership. You still have a bunch of miles and time left on the original Mazda factory warranty (read the warranty brochure that came with the owners manual), so why not just go with that. If you are still considering the dealers extended warranty, read it thoroughly before you sign on the dotted line. Usually there are many kick-out phrases in the qualifying criteria that allow the dealer to avoid providing service under certain situations.

 

Many users have cars near 50k miles and no major problems. its still unclear just how far these cars will go though.

I wouldnt worry about the extended warrenty now. You still have a good deal of your factory warrenty left. As you get closer to the end of the factory warrenty the companys that sell extended warrentys will send you more stuff.

The way I look at it : you can always buy an extended warrenty later....so why rush now. Also if you have trouble free life from the motor thru the factory warrenty you may not want an extened warrenty.

When I get a car I always set aside some money every month, its the 'oh **** car fund' not to be confused with my regular 'oh **** fun' that one is for anything not car related. Every month I put money into these accounts, usualy about 50 bucks a month for each of them, I start off with about 1000 usualy. I only use the car one if something major happens that I wasnt expecting, insurnace deductable, repair not covered by warrenty...ect. at the end of the first year I usualy have more money in it than I would have spent on the extended warrenty.

So now I have the money I would need, but i didnt spend it on some warrenty, so if there were a real emergency, outside of something with the car, and my regular oh **** fund coudlnt cover it, say medical expenses or something, I could use the money, vs is I gave 1500 to a warrenty company, thats money that is just gone. Also This way I earn intrest on the money and it bumps up my liquid net worth, and the ladies love that (jk, lol)

 

Good ideas everyone and thakns for the input on them. Seems like the car is trouble free for the most part. They wanted to sell me a total service warranty which covers wear and tear except normal items so they say. But it was going to cost $1500 and raise my payment $20 per month for a extra 25K miles over the factory so a total of 75K miles. It's 50K miles on the bumper to bumper right? I will be reading my manuals very soon.

 

50K bumper to bumper (except for normal wear and tear items) including a free loaner car. Rust and emissions equiptment have a longer warranty period. It should be in the stack of papers you get from the dealer.

 

For me, it was just a piece of mind. I'm not very mechanically inclined and given the fact that this was the birth of a new type of rotary, I figured that $20ish/month (I forget exactly how much it was but it was in the low 20s) wasn't that big of a deal. Not only that, I knew absolutely nothing about how the rotaries worked before I got my RX8...so I ended up getting an extended warranty for 7 years/100,000k...

So it's all good...either way, you don't really lose. It just depends on how you look at it, that's all.

 

If you can be disciplined about it, every time you buy a car, appliance, etc, find out how much the extended warranty costs and put that money in a savings account (or money market as fray pointed out). You'll save a ton of money paying for repairs out of this account. Of course, it would be nice if I practiced what I just preached. I don't buy extended warranties but I haven't been putting that money away. However, if I look back at how much I've spent on repairs it's been really low: way less than what I would have spent on all those extended warranties.

 

I don't know where they get these numbers from but they are way out of wack!
we bought a 05 with alarm ,window tint and ecthing on the tint , tires and wheel warranty, ext. warranty 100,000 . 5 yr . 100.00 deduc. the mazda ppi, all for 1900.00
This is in Ft-Worth Texas mazda dealer

 

One of the highest areas of consumer complaints is extended warranties. Just think about it. It's a business. They only make money by carefully excluding coverage and denying claims. They are not a good value.

The dealer tried convincing me to buy one. I asked for the fine print. I sat in the finance manager's office reading all of the different contracts that he offered. Not one of them explicitly covered things like the rotors, apex seals or eccentric shaft. They did explicitly exclude hundreds of parts.

Sorry, no dice.

 

It's well known that the prices for these contracts is whatever the dealer thinks they can get. Whenever one of these is sold there's high fives all around the back office.

 

I did not take it after all. I went back and had them rewrite to contract and deduct that $20 per month off of my payment. So that now can go to a tank of gas or atleast a few gallons!

 

only take an extended warranty if it's from the factory.. also you can buy it at any time while you are still under factory warranty from any dealer...