and btw, since late august when the rx-8 debuted, they have already sold more rx-8's then 3rd gens that were sold in america.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mav
At the local autox, we have a bunch of S2000's running and a few RX-8's.

 

They sold more RX-8s this year than they sold Miatas.

Steve

 

While I agree with you Steve about drawing conclusions too soon, I had a chance to spend some time as a passenger at Buttonwillow in a near stock S2000. RA1s, BitterBar and a front swaybar.

At the same time we were running, the Mazda factory truck was there with a couple of the Mazda's factory pro drivers (including Paul Bounacorsi - or however you spell his name). They were doing tire testing on the new Hoosiers (awesome tires BTW) on an RX8 and a 6s. We had a chance to do about 15 laps with the RX8 playing lead and follow. Despite less sticky tires (about 5 track days on the RA1s) and a total cargo weight exceeding 400 lbs in the S2000 (which is over the factory recommendation ) we had no problem keeping up with the RX8 and putting some moves on it into some corners, eventually making the pass.

Now, the driver I was riding with was pretty good, but he's not a pro driver. Had the S2000 been on the new Hoosiers (which seemed to go off a bit after 8-10 laps, but were reported by several testers to be 0.5-1 sec/lap quicker minimum), or short a 220 lbs passenger (me) it would have been no contest. I think the RX8's biggest problem was power/weight followed by a little too much body motion in stock form. Still a very nice car for the money, and with ECU mods coming out that allow it to deliver the rated hp, it should get faster.

UL

p.s. - the 6s seemed to have damaged the engine after a particularly hard session with PB. He seemed to enjoy beating the car up

 

Yeah. Don't get me wrong -- I think that a stock S2000 should be notably faster than a stock RX-8 around a track. I haven't seen good data to support this, though, and my point was that one local autocross doesn't constitute proof of anything.

Odd that Mazda would be testing new Hoosiers, let alone with Mazda 6s. Any idea why they were doing so?

Steve

 

I didn't think the MT article was that bad. If you want to read negative S2000 press check out the UK magazines. Autocar called the S2000 one of the most disappointing cars of the last five years in reply to a reader's question about whether to buy the S or a Boxster. They also recently drove the '04 and gave it 2 stars out of 5 for handling.

 

In what issue did Autocar test an '04?

 

The S is not road tested but there's a 2-page article in the "New cars" section of the 20 Jan issue (Carrera GT on the cover).

 

I have to say that the Winning Blue color on the RX-8 looks very nice! Wish we could get an S in that color!!!!!!!

 

Several Hoosier reps were there doing a tire test. A number of other cars besides the Mazdas were given free tires to test. The reps were taking tire temps, driver comments, etc. I talked to about 4 different test drivers (each with a different car - Mini, MR-S, etc.) and they all had great things to say about the new Hoosiers.

SC

[QUOTE]Originally posted by PedalFaster
Yeah.