saturn

It was redesigned.

OldCoot

The redesign helped sales this year, but 2005 Miata production was not resumed after the fire in the RX8/MX5 factory last year. Last year MX5 sales were very inventory constrained. According to the press release MX5 sales are still inventory constrained.

Zokk's 8

Although sales are slow compared to the other Mazda products, they still sell more of them every month than the FD sold in all of 1995. Only 14,000 FD's were ever sold, RX-8's outsold that the first year. I think a nice turbo Mazdaspeed RX-8 would help sales greatly. C'mon Mazda, help me out here. I haven't seen a RX-8 TV commercial in over a year. If they made them all look like mine, they would have much higher sales. Too many are plain looking.

Razz1

Well if you guys bought more body kits and told the MFgrs. You would buy a reliable product that gave you 50 more RWHP

Sales would be crazy.

truemagellen

Has anyone looked at current international sales numbers? RX-8s aren't that popular in the states...I could go into why but it has been done before.

My brother just got back from Europe and he said he saw hundreds of 8s and our car costs way more in Europe (then add on higher gas prices and it is $$$$$$).

Design1stCode2nd

I think the 8 would be more popular in Europe since some contries tax based on the displacement of the engine, any way you slice it 200+hp from a 1.3 is pretty good. They are not as HP crazy as Americans are either. I would think the MPG would slow down sales however, with the high petrol prices.

AvatarQAZ

I love the fact that the 8 is starting to die down. This will make our cars more rare. Currently the resale value isnt all that good on the 8. I dont know about you out there but I intend to keep mine until it completely dies... and then put a 20B into it... or if mazda decides to keep the rotary pushing whatever new rotary design they come out with.

rotarygod

I'm not upset. I just have little tolerance for bullshit. We just always seem to have an abundance of it.

Razz1

It's 2.6 L in Europe

AdRoCK3217

Uh, there is no SINGULAR answer for why the FD was pulled.

For one, the US dollar was rising, and the Japanese Yen was falling - RAPIDLY. Over the 3 years the FD was on sale in the US, it's price, due to currency rates, went up over $7500...............it's competition did not go up nor down, but got FASTER. In 1995, the FD's competition was cheaper, faster, and (arguably) more reliable. There was no reason to buy the FD in 1995, mechanical-wise. (Unless you just loved rotaries - much of America obviously did not.)

Second, the OBD-II system was being adapted to America. Sure, you can say Mazda dipped out just before it came out. But uh..we don't really know that for sure. I'll go ask Mazda. :-D

rotary crazy

and the fact that mazda was not doing very well in the $$$$ side of things, how could they justify spending that money on 500 cars a year sales when there bread and butter cars were not doing so good?