refering to the car as bulbous doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

better then is being called a carton :p

 

My reaction…

I think Ann allocated too much space to the Hp snafu. Chances are the write up won’t be revised until a significant alteration is made to the RX-8; long before that, the reduced Hp rating will be ancient history.

I also think she was a little harsh on the rear seat accommodations. If Mazda used language like “opulence, abundance, luxuriance, etc.” she’d have a point but what they said is that the RX-8 is a “true four seater” which is clearly true.

My last criticism with her report concerns the engine / battery cover remark. Show me one single upscale car today that doesn’t have them; you can’t. Mazda cleverly mounted the engine cover so it could quickly be removed / replaced without wear. I actually take the engine cover design as an indication Mazda had the enthusiast in mind during development.

Now Ann could have ripped on the third gen’s short engine life & high operational costs. Instead, she pointed out how long Mazda has been making rotary engines & even included a reference to a prestigious endurance race victory.

Additionally, she could have mentioned the relatively poor fuel economy or the less then neck snapping skid pad figures or the horrendous depreciation first & second gen. RX-7’s experienced but she didn’t.

In terms of the comments about the RX-8 having confusing internal & external styling. Those are completely subjective assessments to which she is entitled & I happen to agree with her…I almost cried the first time I say those Chipmunk Cheek fenders.

I don’t believe Ann made the best use of her available space but I do think her over all assessment was pretty fair.

 

I think she prefers SUVs, she just gave the new VW toureg a 9.5. To each is own, I think SUVs are just a nuisance, but then that's just me.

 

Hmm.


RX 7 Guy,
It will be interesting to see how the RX8 copies are treated in the reviews as they appear - Subaru, Jaguar, Chevy, Ferrari Scagg -whatever.

I find the RX 8 to be a revolutionary design and apparently many car builders seem to agree scrambling to bring their concepts to production. The front of the RX 8 greatly resembles classic sports cars. The 350 Z which Ann gave a higher score to is more contemporary in style but also more trendy especially inside. A great deal of sprayed silver plastic, etc. make a less timeless appearance. That car rides rougher and noisier and the act of shifting takes effort albeit with greater torque lunge.

Whatever the RX 8 is, it is without dispute, a well-thought out design. The performance figures seem to be all over the board with several magazines quoting 5.9 second 0-60. What seems ridiculous though is how some people say the car is underpowered. How can a car with a 0-60 like that be considered underpowered? People forget that the torque figure is nearly half again as much with a high RPM car. They read the 159 ft lb. and thing geez but what they dont think of is 9000 rpm and gearing. That means that the car is quite capable of spirited driving. I thnk it is one of the best looking cars on the road myself and was shocked the first time I saw one and the expected MSRP. The car handling is one of the best balanced cars I have driven. I was actually shocked at the G35 sport and 350Z (nice cars) but the ride could be compared to street skating or an old vette. Sporty but compromised. I know that it seems like I am biased but actually I determined this even before buying the 8. I contacted MSN/Ann and questioned the interior comments. The interior theme of circles is only accented by the rotary which is inside and out. Neat car.

 

i can't stand people who can't find nothing wrong with somethin so they take the littliest thing wrong and make it seem big. what a SOB. the exterior styling is great, way better than the 350z. and how can the interior confuse your? mazda made it slick and simple. I mean damn, she doesn't know anything about a sports car besides if it has 2 doors or not.

 

Well here are my two cents...

I read Ann Job's review before I bought my 8. In fact I felt it was a flattering review by someone who admittedly wasn't pushing the car and still felt its potential as to handling and the fact it could "dart out in traffic" and zing slow pokes in traffic.

She didn't like the styling---so what? I do, and so do hundreds of folks who have felt compelled to track me down or stop me to ask me questions about my 8.

On a scale of 1 to 10 My 8 is a 15! I love it. She likes the the 350Z---be my guest. You can have my 8 "when you pry it from my cold dead hands"--- a la Charlton Heston NRA national meeting 2002 (course he wasn't talking about his 8--I am)

 

------------------------------
Cons:

Confused interior
Purists may prefer real sport coupe
Not the sleekest or prettiest exterior

------------------------------

Confused interior? I'm confused... What's so hard to figure out? If you have no common sense, and can read... RTFM! Maybe she couldn't figure out how the rotating side vents worked and didn't understand why the A/C was blowing on her lap. I love the dash/interior/controls of this car!!! Took me about 90 seconds of looking and fiddling around to know how everything worked. Maybe she had to make a deadline for her editor.


Purists? Aren't Rotorheads purists? Yeah... it's not a real sport coupe. Are the SATURN IONS considered sport coupes? I think they call it a sedan... "RX-8 sport coupe" naaaa... "RX-8 Sport Sedan" naaaa... "RX-8 wow... nice f'n car" yeah... that's it. A purist would prefer a New Viper... can you spare $90K?


Not the sleekest or prettiest exterior? I work with 125+ people, have around 30 friends, 14 local relatives and countless compliments from strangers... never have I ever gotten a negative or even a neutral comment from anyone. I know it's not everyone's cup o tea, and that's fine... people actually like the look of the PTCruisers (sorry, I think it should replace the Hearse). Go figure. Sure... it's no 360 Spider or Enzo, but it's better looking than most other cars (especially daily drivers) on the road today. Maybe the VW beetle is more to her liking. Yeah, I'm biased... but I think that car reviewers should realize that their reviews usually come with pictures, and you know what they say about pictures. The reviewer's personal tastes on cars should be left out of it... It's be interesting to see what they personally drive.

My $0.02

Peace

 

A telling feature of such heavily formatted reviews is that each review must have exactly 3 Pros and 3 Cons. This sort of implies that car design is a zero-sum game, where each strength necessarily implies a weakness elsewhere (as if features were bound to opposite sides of a see-saw).

Imagine trying to write the MSN review summary for a classic dog like a Yugo or AMC Pacer. Guess what, a Chrysler K-car has 3 pros and 3 cons, just like the RX8!

Of course this is nonsense, and one of the reasons I love my RX8 is that the sum of the strengths far outpaces the sum of the negatives.

Of course, the summary also doesn't indicate the relative importance or weight of each Pro or Con. Does the car have somewhat better handling than the norm and a unusably confused interior or does it have outstanding handling and a slightly confused interior? A reviewer may like the handling of both the RX8 and a WRX and dislike the exterior styling of both, but the bullet points lose the important points that the handling are in the same ballpark but one turns heads (obviously more than a few people like the styling) and the other gets lost in the parking lot.

This is another reason I love my RX8. I feel its strengths are good across the board (and match what I value) and its weaknesses are minimized (and tend to match what I don't much value). It isn't just fun to drive, it's very fun to drive. The AC is a little weak, but it's only a little weak. Given that some trade-offs have to be made, the RX8 not only comes out well ahead of the game, but manages to put the "very"s and the "just a little bits" in the right places. Other cars I considered all seem to put a "very" in at least one negative category: uncomfortable, bland, ugly, noisy, expensive, etc. I'd give the RX8 its worst negative in MPG, but frankly mileage (like insurance or other abstract external factors) is not something I notice about a car while I'm driving it

I also think the RX8 recognizes the law of diminishing returns better than anything else I considered. Sure, it would be great to have more HP, but I rarely get the chance to push to car to the limits, so the additional HP would be a marginal improvement. The degree to which +50HP improves the pleasure of driving a car depends a lot on where its added: a +50HP increase from 220HP to 270HP doesn't add nearly as much as a +50HP increase from 170HP to 220HP. This is the Viper falacy- adding yet still more power yields less and less additional fun. I find the RX8 approaches the threshold of diminishing returns with a fine eye. The cockpit is comfortable, but any more luxury would frankly be a waste. The back seats are about right for how often I put someone back there (reasonably often, but for relatively short trips). I've had power to spare before my safetly and/or speeding ticket paranoia has taken over under every condition I've driven it [which excludes, admitedly, street racing and such]. A 350Z has more raw power, but how much of that power lies beyond my threshold?

Each of us want different things from our cars, or else we'd all end up driving the same thing. Any reviewer obviously values some things but not others, and any mass market forum such as MSN or CR is going to skew its bias towards their concept of the Average Joe. A good reviewer reviews from the point of view of a likely consumer, but sometimes even a good reviewer can't get into the headspace of someone with fundamentally different values to make meaningful assessments [I could give a much more sensible review of a hard rock CD, even though I don't much care for the genre, than I could of a hip-hop CD because I think I have a grasp of the aesthetics of the one but not the other].

Finally, it is encouraging that despite all this, she did in fact give the RX8 a very respectable 8.something out of 10 (suggesting that she recognizes that her Pros are strong Pros and her Cons are minor Cons), and that here Cons are much more subjective and external. If you like the exterior styling (I do, and so do most people I know), don't find the interior design confused (no complaints here), and aren't a "purist" who would prefer a real [read "standard", "traditional" or "conventional"] sports coupe the bullet point summary suddenly reads as 3 Pros and 0 Cons. The fact that she did not find anything substantial (in the sense of not being purely matters of personal taste) negatives is a good thing.

SGC