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| Road Test Mazda RX-8 R3 |
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Daft But Brilliant
Or, to put it another way, it's going to be an R3, which is Mazda's name for the mildly reworked version tested here. At £24,995, it's nearly £2000 more expensive than the old 231PS, but it's also better equipped. As standard, it comes with a Sports Styling Pack (front bumper, side skirts, rear wing), revised lights and intakes, very supportive Recaro seats, beautiful 19" alloy wheels, cruise control, automatic headlights and wipers, R3-badged carpet mats and an integrated Bluetooth system. The rotary engine has been tweaked very slightly, but it still produces the same 228bhp, and performance figures of 0-62mph in 6.4 seconds and a top speed of 146mph remain unchanged. These are startling numbers if you accept Mazda's estimation that the engine capacity is just 1308cc, but there are two ways of measuring the size of a rotary unit, and I prefer the one which gives a figure of 2616cc. If you go for the 1308cc option you can fairly say that the RX-8 has the most powerful 1.3-litre engine available in the UK, but you then have to accept that it is also by far the dirtiest and least economical. The fuel consumption and CO2 figures have never been an RX-8 strong point, but now (perhaps largely because the R3 is heavier than the car it replaces) they are even worse at 24.6mpg combined and 299g/km, the latter statistic putting the RX-8 firmly into the highest category of VED with a tax bill of £400, rising to £440 from next April.
And don't go thinking that you'll actually achieve 24.6mpg. I picked up the test car 27 miles after its tank had last been filled, and the petrol warning light came on at just over 250 miles. Even with a very charitable estimate of how much fuel had been consumed, I doubt that I had managed more than 20mpg during that time. |
