50/50 isn't "perfect", nothing magic about that weight distribution. Ideally a rear-drive performance car would have some rear bias. With an 8th of a tank of gas and me in it, the 240Z is at 49/51 Now to get that 30 lb. lighter carbon fiber hood...

 

The C5 Z51 is at 49/51.

 

There was never an Rx6. The first US rotary Mazda was the R100 followed by the Rx2, 3,4, the rotary pick-up, the Cosmo(Rx5) and three generations of Rx7s.

RX stands for Rotary Experimental.

 

considering the recent reliability reports, i guess eXperimental is still quite appropriate.

 

What reliability reports would those be? All I've seen lately is the RX8 Renesis engine listed as one of the top 10 engines from last year...

Not flaming ya, I would just like to know.

 

Perhaps it will look something like this: here I like the absense of the little half door.

Edit: Here is a concept I just made. I forgot to get rid of the watermark of the website that took the original picture of the RX-8, so I'm not just stealing this and claiming it as mine . I'm not as good at photoediting as that guy is though.


I took the hood and headlights from a heavily modified RX-7 and put them on the RX-8. Then, I got rid of the bar that seperates the driver side window and backseat passenger. Then I shortened the roof a few inches. Then I added a spoiler from another RX-7, because an RX-7 isn't cool without a spoiler. Yea, yea, yea, shut up rice heads, it needs the spoiler or it will look like a Ford Probe. I don't really like the spoiler I added, but I couldn't find another RX-7 at the same angle.

Here is the original pic of the RX-8 click here to see it

 

your color matching is terrible. but that looks pretty good as an RX7 replacement. i agree about the ford probe comparo.

 

Psst... shut up unless you can do better.

I think my pic give you a good idea of what I'd like to see. I think my color matching was quite a bit better than my lumpy dented hood too.

Here's a comparison pic of the two:

 

Looks good, but doesn't look that much different from the FD body style.

Here's a pic from a japanese mag that had "guesses" at what the next RX7 and 3000GT could look like:
http://s4.invisionfree.com/RotaryBlv...post&id=433075

 

Huh, those are some interesting ideas. I guess I just can't seem to get out of the '90s. The trend in sports cars seems to be making them taller and more comfortable.

I guess I better make a few quick millions so I can start my own car company that gets poor sales on low bodied sports cars.

*Edit* A friend of mine tooled around with the picture I made and made it a bit more modern. I hate the useless roof scoop, but I suppose the rest is nice.

 

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...&highlight=RX8

that's a thread from this forum from about 5 months ago. i haven't heard anything since, but if any of that is true, its still disconserting even if the numbers aren't that great. it will be interesting to see the reliability of those engines over the next 5 years. many pervious gen RX-7 needed a rebuild at 60k-70k miles.

 

That's interesting, haven't heard anything like that lately. Wonder if it was an actual production issue, or if it was a semi-isolated thing

I think rotary's have a bad reputation because they really weren't reliable at first. They've improved tremenously over the years, and still sell really well in Japan in the RX7s (they might be done with the RX7 in Japan now, but I know they were building them up until a few years ago for sure.)

I mean, the engine only has 3 moving parts, the biggest issue is oil/coolant delivery, something which has improved greatly since their introduction.

Rotary engines can last just as long as any other engine, they're just much more sensitive to poor care than other engines. I know of lots of rotary engines with 150-200k on the stock engine. I guess it's all just relative. Like when people tell me that there aren't any LT1's out there with over 60,000mi on them with untouched heads (i.e. blown headgaskets, etc)

 

I think most American RX-7s from 1993 to 1995 are ticking time bombs at about 85,000 to 90,000 miles. Most of the ones I see on ebay are being sold because of engine fires, blown turbos, smoking because of lost compression, and etc.

Oh, but to reenforce your comment about the LT1s, my '95 Z28 has 66,000 miles (approximate, I don't want to go look) and it is still completely stock except for a rebuilt transmission . Then again, I don't race my car at all, it's never been over 110 mph.

 

How many of those are STOCK though? I see some of those too, but they've usually been abused. It's easy to turn up the power on those cars, and if you don't do it right (just like any other car), bad things happen.

Last time I was cruising e-bay, there were 2 93-95 RX7s with over 150,000 on the clock that were still on the original engine.

Anyway, hope you don't think I'm trying to be argumentative. I have a bad habit of taking the "underdog" side in most things

 

Most of them are abused I imagine, I usually stop reading the ad when I get to the part where they mention "it has a small engine fire, but the damage has been fixed."