Category: Affordable Sports 
Price Range: No data available
Unusual concept, smooth engine, good comfort, lots of fun to drive, room for four and their luggage, great value
Fuel costs, carbon dioxide emissions, not much else
Mazda takes the bold step of bringing a four-door rotary engined coupe to the market and gets it spot-on - the RX-8's superb.
The RX-8 gets many of the basics right. It has a very good driving position. The seats are low-slung (for a four-door with a boot), but very supportive and on the driver's side, fully adjustable. The wings on the back-rest can obstruct your shoulder/elbow when reaching for the gearlever a little, however, as can any bottles you've got in the transmission tunnel-sited cup-holders. The gearlever itself, however, is stubby, triangular in profile and a joy to use. The small steering wheel with its ideal-width rim adjusts for rake only, and not reach, which is a little disappointing but doesn't seem to adversely affect most people's preferred driving position. Surprisingly, heeling and toeing isn't quite as easy as it might be in such a driving-biased car. The rear pillars are a bit too large to make reversing easy, and you need to be careful about lane changes too. Unlike previous rotary engines, there is far less driveline shunt, although edging along at very low speeds can be jerky if you're not delicate with clutch and throttle. But most of the time, the RX-8 is easy to drive smoothly. The RX-8 may not be as focused and harsh as some performance cars, but it's perfectly suited to providing maximum thrills while remaining eminently usable and comfortable. The steering is responsive and all pedals, and the gearbox, have a cohesive, progressive feel. It's an agile car, and stable when pushed - erring towards understeer (the front end losing grip) when its grip levels are approached. But it resists this state very well, changing direction with the alacrity of mid-engine cars whose engines are mounted behind the occupants. Keen drivers will also discover that, with the stability control switched off, the RX-8's tail slides beautifully through corners. Judicious use of the throttle will straighten its line on the exit of tight, damp corners to provide fuss-free handling that's plenty of fun.
No complaints here. The base model has 192bhp, which is quite enough to propel it down the road with vigour. Driving the rear-wheels through a five-speed gearbox, nought to 62mph takes a respectable 7.2 seconds and top speed is 139mph. However, the 231bhp version, tantalisingly only about 10 percent more expensive, comes with a six-speed gearbox, increased standard equipment and much livelier performance. The 0-62mph time drops to 6.4 seconds and the top speed is 146mph, although the lower-powered version sometimes feels torquier. There's not a lot of low-end grunt, but both engines pull cleanly from low revs - and then they rev, and rev, and rev, to over 9000rpm. Power increases in an incredibly smooth and linear manner, which will come as quite a shock to drivers of 'normal' combustion engines. The noise is odd, too. At low revs it hums with a slight whine, to turn hard-edged and snarly when pulling harder before building to a high-pitched crescendo. And it's incredibly smooth. Imagine putting a nest of hornets in a spin dryer and you get some idea.
