Found in Sept. '05 issue.

Some quotes:

"Whoever matched this black-and-brown Doberman color scheme to the metallic red exterior should be flayed."

"Why the 'holey' sun visors? Stupid. Defeats the purpose."

"Sports car or convection oven? I haven't felt A/C this weak since the Honda Accord of the late 80's."

"For the money I would park this in my garage over a 350z any day."

"The Nav system worked flawlessly and even took me on routes around heavy traffic, and it never missed a destination. However, it's female voice should take some lessons from the Jaguar wing of Ford. It needs to sound sexier."

"L.A. to Phoenix, all freeway, and this thing is getting only 19 mpg. It's a six-speed, for Pete's sake! So there is a reason no other car company has developed a rotary."

"It's a stellar gearbox. Very effortless and smooth. Still feels brand-new after almost 35,000 miles. It's a beautifully balanced machine that is so composed on twisty roads.

 

I don't care for the tan/black combo either...

I don't get the problem with the suvisors? They do a perfect job of blocking sunlight, and the holes allow you to see lights (or even straight through the visor).

The A/C isn't exceptional, but it's an easy fix (wrapping the coolant line over the engine).

Nothing to be ashamed of. The Z is an awesome car. If you can deal with a more harsh ride, two seats, and far less cargo space, there's no reason not to get it instead.

I want a Nav system.

Fuel mileage is a head-scratcher. Should Mazda possibly have made 6th gear a bit taller? (~4k at 70mph isn't going to be frugal).

That sums up some of the best points quite nicely. :D

 

Thanks for summarizing the article.

 

"For the money I would park this in my garage over a 350z any day."

^doesn't that mean he'd rather have an 8 in his garage over a 350z any day...as in..a compliment?? or did i get that wrong.

 

I'm pretty sure that's a compliment. :D

 

Good read. Guess I just assumed all but the last comment was a put-down, and totally mis-read that one. :D Way to go, me.

 

i read it the same way you did... to me it sounded like he would wanna hide the 8 before the Z... i guess it could be taken either way... maybe if he was clearly for or against the car, it would make more sense...

 

He's clearly picking the 8 over the Z, "in my garage" means I would want to own one, not hide the thing.

And all 3 of these are positive remarks:

"For the money I would park this in my garage over a 350z any day."

"The Nav system worked flawlessly and even took me on routes around heavy traffic, and it never missed a destination. However, it's female voice should take some lessons from the Jaguar wing of Ford. It needs to sound sexier."

"It's a stellar gearbox. Very effortless and smooth. Still feels brand-new after almost 35,000 miles. It's a beautifully balanced machine that is so composed on twisty roads.

 

I would take an 8 over a Z also....that is what he meant

 

While reading the article, i thought it came off more negative then positive.
don't blow that 8 over a z way out of proportion... that was only one man's comment.
the others were not so great :/

 

This was a pretty disappointing article in that it shows C&D's bias. The author's style was somewhat pompous which didn't help. The entire article seemed pretty negative despite the fact that they only had one problem (the Cat, which was misdiagnosed by the dumbass dealer). Other than that they were inconvenienced by a recall, the oil additions, and they didn't think the A/C was up to par. Yippie.

The other negative comments were unbelievably nit-pickey. One guy didn't like the optional two-tone interior color (personal taste), holey sun visors (which work well for me), the female voice of the Nav wasn't sexy enough (WTF?) and once again the gas mileage of 19mpg. Every f-ing car in its class gets around the same mileage and they never say a word about the other car's mpg such as the G35/350Z and their beloved new 3-series which I think averaged 17 mpg and they called it an IMPROVEMENT (???) over the previous generation. Why did they even bother complaining about such ridiculous crap? [puke]

It's funny how with some cars they make a bad experience look not-so-bad and a not-so-bad experience look bad.

My .02. Rant over. C&D subscription not being renewed.

 

Damn guys, don't take it so personally. They're almost always over-critical in the big write-ups on their Long-Term Testing. That's the entire point of having the test -- to see how many problems crop up and how usable it is as a true daily driver. The whole fun-to-drive and performance aspect is covered in their previous articles.

The fact that they had to find "nitpicky" things to complain about says a lot about the car.

And, no, I'm not at C&D fanboy. As a general rule I'm not a huge fan, and after that "Shoot-Out" debacle they did between the GTO and the Mustang that was it for me as far as subscriptions go.

 

^ C&D fanboy :D

 

I also felt the overall tone of the article was a bit negative. They did say it was great in traffic and always hunting for the next apex. They have writen many times complaining about the G35 & 350Z shifter, and always praise the 8 tranny. Complaining about the A/C in the Arizona sun, and not have anything go wrong or break, one misdiagnosed CEL, and 19mpg avg for 40,000 miles. The review was rather harshly judging. It did get a bit faster to 60mph and faster 1/4 mile at 40k miles by almost half a second. Front brake pad life expectancy 70k miles and over 100k for the rears and you know these guys use them hard. I usually agree with their reasoning, the fastest cars rarely win their comparisons.

 

So with all those positive things I don't see how you get a negative tone out of the article. When I read it I was impressed. I thought they liked the car.

We all know about the AC and fuel mileage issues. And in my opinion the sun visors are stupid. They work half the time and the rest of the time they focus the sun right in my eyes. I guess it depends upon your seating angle and the position of the sun.

But overall I was happy that they liked the car. I would also rather have an RX-8 in my garage than a 350Z (if my car was fortunate to actually get into the garage).

 

They started off the article with the negative tone of the problems with the FD RX-7. They then said their first problem was at 400 miles and continued to harp on the Cat code that came up a couple more times. That's not negative? The car ran flawlessly for the next 40,000 miles. Yes they did mention a couple of nice things such as the handling but what else did they say that was positive - that it didn't have as many problems as the problematic FD RX-7?

 

The article definitely had a negative leaning.

 

Hey...what was that all about? Tell me more...

If there is something consistant about car mag's...is that they are inconsistant. I've been a reader of MT since 9th grade (the Dodge Viper made me a car guy) and I've seen it many times. I don't know much about C&D but I bet they tend to do the same.

We love the stuff that talks great about the 8...but then take issue with when they take a negative stand. That's why you have to read everything you can out there to avoid those writers who woke up that day with a stick in their butt.

In 4.3K miles my average is 19+mpg (in mainly city) and compared to other sports cars that's actually pretty good. So all the fuel economy complaints (at least for me) are not a big issue.

I was telling my wife yesterday...you know, I love this car. It's the perfect car for me because:

It looks GREAT! (she laughs every time she is with me at the people looking at my car)
It seats 4 (rear comfort is pretty good)
It fits a bunch of stuff in the trunk (while yes...the opening is narrow)
It's fast
It handles great
It's comfortable
It's tranny is smooth (smoother than when I originally got the car)
It's seats are comfortable and the ride is pretty good for a sports car
It's FUN TO DRIVE!

Out of all the car companies out there...Mazda built the perfect sports car for me, and for that they will have my business from now on. No, I'm not just buying Mazda's...but they will be the first company I look to for all future cars I get.

No, it’s not perfect…but it’s pretty close in my opinion!

 

I second this thought/feeling!!!!! :D

 

I like C&D.

Don't trip, C&D haters...they DID name the 8 as one of the "10 Best Cars" for the last two years AND named it the winner in a comparo between the G35 and the Mustang Cobra (4/03).

 

Probably about a year ago now, C&D did a shoot-out between the '05 GTO and the '05 Mustang GT. The comparison itself was a good one. Great review of both cars.

The problem came up in their final scoring.

The GTO trounced the Mustang in virtually every category. The two main categories it lost in were trunk space and price -- both understandable. But the GTO was still way ahead in the scoring.

However, for whatever reason, C&D apparently needed the Mustang to win. *cough* Ad Dollars *cough* (C&D was, and is, full of Mustang ads). So they created a "Gotta Have It" factor, a totally subjective measure from the staffers, gave it an absurd weight (off the top of my head I believe it came up to 25% of the total score), and had the Mustang totally kick the GTO's *** in the category. Thus giving it the "win" by 1 point. Funny how that worked out.

At least in their next issue they were decent enough to post a letter or two in their Letters to the Editor section and the Editor said that of the hundreds of letters they got on the comparison, only 2 supported their decision. No apology, retraction, or other reasoning given, but at least they made it known that people thought their comparison was bullshit.

 

Let's see:

'a hole seeking missile in traffic and the perfect car for people who think the Lotus Elise should come as a station wagon' - my favorite.

'Relatively featherweight, always agile, and remarkably stiff with finger-flick steering, the RX-8 is constantly hunting for the next apex.'

It goes on with favorable comments. They even complained about 19 mpg, which I think some people on this forum would consider good. They say it 'guzzled one quart (of oil) an average of every 3600 miles' Is that considered guzzling?

And they finished the article with 'we adored the RX-8 when entertaining roads were on the schedule and tolerated its annoyances the rest of the time.' You can't ask for a better comment than that can you?

The comments about the RX-7 showed how much better the 8 was than the 7, which did have its problems.

With C/D you never know because they might go way off base just to generate interest. C/D is more interested in creative writing then being a strict reference source (that would be R&T). I am glad that they gave it an honest review.

 

Vectorwolf - you mentioned wrapping the AC lines over the engine, with I assume some type of pipe insulating foam like you would use on water lines or something more heavy duty?

 

Yes, they did, but...

That's exactly where the overall negative tone shows. Considering the principle how a rotary engine works, that can NOT be considered as "guzzling". Even though my RX-8 doesn't even consume that much oil... they could have described it in a way that makes it less than a shortcoming if they did not want to sound the whole thing negative. "Guzzling" for me means that the thing consumes something way out of spec - which is not the case, especially not if we consider how did they drive the car (likely the way they stole it, wringing it in every corner they could).

Also, if you look at the 'Rants and Raves', they are mostly complaining about really stupid stuff like the sun visors... give me a break. If that's the biggest negative comment a tester can come up with, that's rather a compliment - but for the majority of the readers it will still mean: they had a ton of bad stuff to say about the car (forget about how irrelevant topics they were).

 

All I could think when I read the article was 19MPG?!?! I'd LOVE to be getting 19mpg. Geez, these guys don't know what bad mileage is!

I've had a subscription to C&D for over 10 years now, and I have to say I felt the spin on the RX8 test was negative, which would be fine if it was warranted. But I mean, nothing bad happened!

And I thought the holes in the visor were a seriously great innovation. I can see the stupid Boston traffic lights every 16th of a mile, and not burn my eyes out if the sun is low.