Originally Posted by john_pifer
The things that interest me are, who bought these? Did the people who bought them realize all the idiosyncrasies of the engines? Did they know that these engines can need a rebuild in as few as 60,000 miles, and choose to buy the car anyway, out of a love for the rotary engine? Did they know how inefficient these engines are, and that they have zero low end torque?
Former 2011 RX-8 R3 owner here. God, I miss that car.
AFAICT, the main reasons people bought RX-8s were:
1. Looks
2. Thinking it's fast
3. Thinking rotary engines are cool
A lot of the early adopters bailed once the realities set in. Didn't help that the early model years were especially problematic.
And who bought those cars when the first owners were done with them? More people who had no idea what they were getting into, but with less money. The cars got worse, their new owners fobbed them off again on people with even less wherewithal, and the cycle continued. Think German V12 luxury car, except with a much lower starting price.
The sales numbers peaked within a year of release and then declined 30-50 percent per year, every year, until the car went out of production. Mazda refreshed the car pretty thoroughly for MY2009+, addressing every known pain point and fixing a bunch of things people didn't even know were broke, and no one cared. The car had an awful rep and hadn't improved at all by the numbers while the competition had improved significantly. Sales figures from 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 combined were roughly one-sixth the number sold in 2004 alone.
So, the vast majority of RX-8s on the road are from the early years -- which, again, were the most problematic -- and they just get passed around from one hapless/poor/uneducated owner to the next as they rot.
IMO, the real reason to buy an RX-8 is if you care so much about handling that you're willing to sacrifice basically everything else to get it -- but you still need back seats for some reason. That's why I bought mine. But almost no one has those values. And even if you do, it's a terrible car to buy at this point because good examples are insanely rare and, because the owner base is so low on resources and discernment, most of the knowledge base -- even among "experts" -- kind of sucks.
This really is one of the most horrible and excellent cars ever made, IMO.