The fourth–generation Suzuki Jimny: cheap, honest, capable, rugged, cute, and seemingly everyone wants one. That makes me feel stupid, because I don't understand its charm—at all. All off–roaders look the same to me, and trying to sell the Jimny's rugged capabilities to someone in a concrete jungle like me is not just barking up the wrong tree; they'd be in the wrong forest entirely. I can appreciate a cheap, simple, yet capable tool for a job, sure, but I can't help but to feel a tad sad that those basic qualities are rare enough nowadays to become selling points in this industry.
And if I don't even understand its appeal in the real world where the Jimny does its best work, imagine the mental Jimnastics I'd have to go through to like it in a game that mostly features smooth, wide racetracks with long straights to facilitate racing GT3 and LMP1 cars. It sounds about as miserable as my bad pun, doesn't it?
Because of its extremely short and close 1st and 2nd gears primarily used for climbing steep inclines and digging itself out of mud, the Jimny has a shockingly explosive launch off the line in tandem with its 4WD system; we're talking 0–60 times of a very respectable 5.6 seconds... if measured in km/h. Past 52km/h, 3rd gear has to get involved, and that's when the pain and agony really sets in, as it'd take roughly another 10 whole seconds before the Jimny gasps and wheezes its way to triple digit speeds. I very strongly recommend readying up a Spotify playlist, or just creating your own music playlist on a USB drive and hooking it up to your PlayStation before hopping into a Jimny, strictly as aid to stay awake, because the turbocharged 3 cylinder Kei engine isn't particularly charismatic or informative in the grunts and groans it drones out in the lethargic crawl to the next corner, hyperventilating as it approaches its 7,200rpm rev limit. It thus appreciates some short shifting, but 3rd, 4th, and 5th are all so far apart from each other that there is merit in holding onto a lower gear for awhile even after the engine starts to noticeably teeter off a cliff at 6,7. Because of its oddly spaced gears, I can't really pinpoint any particular shift point for the Jimny; it all depends on the corner and which gear the car's in. Generally speaking, I shift the car earlier the higher the gears go. Of particular note is that ultra annoying big gap between 4th and 3rd, which will require 4th gear to dip to around 4,5—well below where the engine makes usable power and notable noise—before the car can shift down into 3rd. This counterintuitive gap means that I'd probably have blown up many a R06A engine on downshifts if engine damage was simulated in GT7, and it's gut wrenching to accidentally do every time, even if engine abuse sadly seems to be the way to get the shortest braking distances in this game.
Once, or IF the Jimny actually gets to a corner, that's when things somehow get worse. Unlike the vast majority of rally cars in GT7 that come with a more flexible AWD system for a curving road, the Jimny instead has a part–time 4WD system with a transfer case to traverse terrain and obstacles that would make the aforementioned cars leak their oil pans. Unfortunately, said 4WD system is forced on at all times in this game, which just results in comical understeer on a paved racetrack. In fact, the only other car I can compare the Jimny to in terms of driving feel is the 1945 Jeep Willys MB, in that both these cars are inherently understeery thanks to their 4WD systems, making them prone to feeling like being railroaded on a paved racetrack. With live axles also come extremely limited camber angle on the wheels to help dig grip out of tarmac, and as a result, these cars stop much better than they turn, and will require drivers to have mostly eased off the middle pedal before they're willing to hunt an apex. Because of this relatively low lateral load for their grip level, the cars don't roll that much when turned, which can give off a sense of tautness belying their soft springs when the tyres have grip, but suddenly become utterly helpless when said grip is lost. Hustling a Jimny around a racetrack then, involves protecting the heavily laden front tyres as though a critically endangered species of wildlife, making sure never to overwhelm them, lest the entire car seize up via the 4WD transfer case acting as a locked differential, costing the driver enough momentum to move mountains. Easier said than done with only 175mm tyres all four corners, Comfort Medium compound by default. In the wet, this transforms the steering wheel into some sort of an alien rotary massage device, as it will judder and clatter non stop with every minute request to redirect the car, making it an utterly miserable chore to wade through a wet track in spite the advantage on paper AWD confers the Jimny.
It may sound horrible to drive thus far, but the Jimny does have some traits of a fun little sports car, shocking as it is for me to write this. While the front tyres overwhelm easily, deliberately timing brake pedal abuse while the front tyres are turned and hooked up can very quickly send the short wheelbase Jimny into a slide from the sudden weight shift of its 1,030kg (2,271lbs) body stilted up 205mm (8.07in) above the ground, short–lived said slide may be from the lack of power to hold it. This makes the Jimny stupidly fun to chuck into tight corners that involve just a short, sharp dab of the brakes, such as The Chicane of Goodwood, and because that's the quickest way to actually get through those sections, it really challenges the driver to be an efficient hooligan!
Of course, power is at a premium as well, and like a good sports car, the Jimny heavily emphasises momentum driving. I had initially thought that a 63HP (47kW) car that struggles to get past 120km/h (75mph) would be too slow to race, but because the Jimny gets devoured alive by atmospheric air, it punches out a veritable black hole in its wake even at the meek speeds it does, which very noticeably sucks in trailing cars, be they similarly bone stock Jimnys, and it has just enough power and gears to take advantage of this to make one–make racing viable, unlike the Jeep and Himedic. Couple this with its somewhat idiosyncratic needs, along with heavy emphasis on momentum, and the end result is a car that lends itself to pretty ridiculous racing, keeping the pack close together while simultaneously putting a magnifying glass over the drivers' skill and adaptability. Equip the startlingly grippy dirt or snow tyres on this car, and it suddenly becomes a gargantuan test in keeping the steering wheel smooth, because all that grip means that simply turning the wheel too quickly can bust out the rear end of the car, costing crucial momentum, a stark contrast to how it handles on paved surfaces with its default Comfort Medium tyres.
I haven't understood the Jimny in real life where it does its best work, and I hadn't expected to like it in Gran Turismo 7, but the Jimny very pleasantly surprised this city boy in the virtual world, and while I still feel like I'm completely misunderstanding its intent in the real world by misusing it in a racing video game, I've still somehow come to like and respect it a fair bit all the same. Heck, most of the things I wish were better in my time with the Jimny weren't even the Jimny's fault; they were the fault of the game—I wish dirt tyres weren't so ridiculously grippy in this game, because they feel like racing items. I wish they came in different grades and hardness levels just like road tyres, allowing the Jimny to actually hold a slide under its own power on a loose surface. I also wish there were more tiny tracks like Horse Thief Mile in the game to really let cars of the Jimny's power level really shine and come alive on. It's a sleeper to me as it is now, but I have a very strong feeling that it's going to get a spicy engine swap in the near future to make it a truly compelling bargain buy. In the meantime, though, that itch can only be somewhat satiated by taking a listen to a Jimny on an aftermarket exhaust make bloody Countach noises.
GTPlanet's Acceptable Use Policy states that I can't link to content with profanity in them without sufficient warning, so here's your (hopefully) sufficient warning to not click on any of the hyperlinks in the text if you're not okay with profanity.
Why do I start this review with that dubious warning? Well, that's because it's a Ferrari.
The company has a nasty habit of massively underreporting their cars' mass figures. I don't trust their power figures, either. They try to control the media. Choose who gets to "buy" their cars, and then threatens them should they do car owner things, like lend them out for reviews or put wraps on their cars. They even went as far as to C&D someone for replacing the prancing horse badge with one of a cat. It seems to me as if they understand and view the world through the competitive mindset of F1: everything beneficial is to be controlled and micromanaged, and anything detrimental is to be swiftly and surely crushed. Either that, or there just simply isn't a very direct translation to Italian for the words, "fairness" and "ownership". I'm surprised that they don't try to sue other car companies for daring to require oxygen to run just like a Ferrari™, or charge a royalty fee for every utterance or worded instance of its name.
Call me stupid if you want, but I literally cannot understand how someone can be a fan of a company that does all that.
But so what. Ferrari are free to conduct themselves and their business however they please as long as they don't violate any applicable laws. Supercars are toys for the rich, and only a microscopic subset of which have the skills and context to really exploit and judge the cars. A little exaggeration and showmanship never hurt anybody. No one watches porn or wrestling demanding that the actors love or hate each other for real. The problem is that, in spite of all this hype and "help", I've just never liked a single Ferrari I've ever driven in the GT series of video games. The vast majority of them drove horribly, even with unrealistically low mass figures, and those that weren't outright disgusting to drive were just "okay" to me at best. Their highly optimistic stats in the game mean that fair comparisons with cars made by other more sensible and ethical car makers are impossible. I have tried, for years, to understand what drives the Tifosi crazy, to understand the appeal, to breathe in the mystique, but every time I try, I just end up caked in horse manure, often missing a few million credits I'd very, very much love to have back. It's almost as if I was inadvertently left out of some mass brainwashing exercise, and it's like the Ferrari I see and the Ferrari others see are completely different things.
So yeah, the 2019 Ferrari F8 Tributo, and my very unhelpful writeup of my time with it.
C&D Incoming in 10... 9... 8...
On paper, this thing is a bloody menace. 710HP (529kW) and 1,330kg (2,932lbs) are just frankly irresponsible numbers, even in the hands of a pretend racing car driver with 1337 skillz. And as if that weren't enough, the gear ratios of this thing feel ripped straight from a car with a quarter of its power: 2nd gear is just good enough for 110km/h (68mph), and the brutal acceleration of the car means that 4th will be required even before reaching the end of the rumble strips out of Turn 11 at Suzuka... which is a hairpin.
So yeah, it's fast. But it wouldn't be a supercar if it wasn't.
The big story behind those fast numbers of course, is in its engine: a 3.9L V8 slung amidships with twin snails huffing into it, capable of revving up to a stratospheric 8,500rpm. Despite the F8 Tributo supposedly being a celebratory sendoff for the midship Ferrari V8, I don't feel any sort of magic or mystique from its centrepiece engine. It sounds undeniably muted from the fantastic shriek of the 458, and its turbos mean that this car gives its best acceleration when egregiously short shifted, which is to say that this engine doesn't even want to sing. Its dual clutch gearbox works quickly and nigh seamlessly, so there isn't even much of an excuse to rev this thing out to save two shifts when approaching a braking zone. As vague as it sounds, it just doesn't seem to have much of a personality or soul to it. Rather than a mechanical concert, it feels like an appliance; like a 710HP, 7,500rpm washing machine. Even someone as ignorant about the brand as me can tell that that's not very Ferrari–ish.
Thankfully, the F8's handling has been much improved over the last few Ferraris I drove: the 458, LaFerrari, and the heinous F12 of the Master Licence test. The F8 lacks that horrible understeer on power reminiscent of an FF hot hatch that the 458 and LaFerrari had, and as a result, it can actually put down its savage power out of a turn without getting into a legal dispute with Armco. The front end I find is a little vague and slow to respond when the steering wheel is initially pulled off centre, but set it up early and right, and the car absolutely will bite into an apex no problem, no doubt helped greatly by coming default with ample Sports Medium tyres, which need no fancy introduction or elaboration beyond, "they work". Same with the brakes.
I'll admit: I don't tend to like road cars at this performance level. The combination of road car tyres and aero with speeds exceeding that of GT3 racecars just results in a counterintuitive chore at best and a threat at worst, and to protect their clientele, cars at this level tend to have a lot of understeer baked into them. They're not at all allowed to have any flaws, or even any sort of a playful personality of their own. When I drive these cars, I'm just clinically watching the speedo figuring out when to shift, and memorising braking points in order to not die, instead of passively reacting to the track and car. Driving a car this fast feels like a one–way communication, like I can't ever let the car "talk" to me, because I always have to be on top of it. I don't fancy fooling around or experimenting with a car this obscenely powerful. Of course, none of that is Ferrari's fault: it's just where the industry and genre of car is at, and my weird personal preferences. But because I can't find any personality in the F8, it, to me, is an "okay" car at best, and I'm sure that's really unfair to the car.
The only time it made me feel anything was when I watched Vic chain stupidly ludicrous drifts together. That made me crack a smile.
Honestly now: take a look at the achingly beautiful AMG GT, and tell me you need a wordy, nerdy review to convince you whether or not you want one.
I don't know why, but Mercedes cars have always given me the impression that they're classy, comfy, and capable things. Despite all their success in motorsports, boy racer things like stripes and wings just never seemed to suit their cars. And it's for this reason that I much, much prefer the older, classier AMG GT S to the overbearing GT R and Black Series. Tasteless bits like gouged out bonnets, IKEA aero, and a boy racer paint job just ruin this shape, and decals feel like straight up vandalism in my eyes. I even showed up to this week's meet without a livery—It's that good.
Yes, it's got a downsized engine. Yes, it's got twin turbos. Yes, it produces less power, and around most tracks, it's slower than the SLS AMG it succeeds. Yes, it needs a hint of a short shift to accelerate its best. But take this thing to redline gear after gear, and tell me that you care about a few hundredths on a stopwatch. Wrangle this surprisingly balanced feeling 1,570kg (3,461lbs) package into the apex of a corner, and tell me you'd rather be in an SLS. Park it, and tell me you can walk away without taking at least a look back thinking, "daaaaaamn!"
The AMG GT S might not be lightweight sports car agile, and it's certainly not the kind of car that tries to hide its heft—this is a big, heavy car that feels big and heavy all the time. But, I think it almost uses its heft and luxobarge status to demand a certain level of respect and reverence from its driver, solely as leverage to surprise them with athleticism when push comes to shove. Look, I'm not the best driver out there. Sometimes I carry too much speed into a corner, and miss an apex. Doesn't help that Nismo inadvertently set boost and slipstream to "Strong" in his GTS lobby with the alien McEwen among the grid. In those dire situations, the AMG GT puts on a fierce face of a pissed off mob boss, but then takes care of me like I'm its own flesh and blood, bending physics with pure muscle and unseen influence alike to make sure no harm comes my way. It has an uncanny ability to rotate itself almost like a swivel chair deep into a corner, where most cars would have evaporated all their front rubber, and then offer a frantic powerslide to its driver to exit the turn. It's plenty capable, with almost an idiot proof quality to it, but you know what? It never feels like a punching bag that can be taken for granted. It commands respect both from its driver and those around it. It's safe, endless theatre, almost like a roller coaster ride.
Outside of those "AMG help!" moments? The car behaves incredibly neutral. The 4.0L V8 may now be twin turbocharged, but I would've never guessed it without the game's boost gauge: the powerband just feels solid in the low and mid range, progressive throughout its rev band, satisfying to rev out, and barks out a tidal wave of sound that would make grown men weak in their knees. Weight distribution is slightly rear biased at 47:53 thanks to the cab back design of the car and its transaxle layout, but despite the front being the lighter end, it's the thinner, 265mm front tyres that will give up first as a hard stop before the 295mm rear tyres get into any real danger... unless of course, the driver buries their right foot in a low gear without TCS. No amount of engineering sorcery will save an idiot from that. On a "clean", "scientific" racetrack such as Suzuka, I get this very distinct feeling of utter chaos happening underneath the car, with the electronic dampers and rear steer systems scrambling to salvage or conjure up grip from out of thin air to shut the complaining tyres up, while the car almost seems to lay a thick carpet over it all to assure me that everything is fine. This isn't a sports car I want to push to find the bleeding edge of and romanticise about "being as one at the limits" with, so that's mostly fine as long as the car behaves, which it very much does. On a road less pretty like Bathurst and the Nordschleife, though? All of that just melts away, and the car would almost blend into the background of a mental zen if not for the respect that 502HP and 1,570kg passively demands. It just feels incredibly natural and neutral, in spite of its battleship mass and firepower, which in itself is a feat of engineering; after all, sometimes the best sign that you've done an impeccable job is if your customer doesn't notice a thing.
The Safety Car version of the GT S is a bit of a peculiar one. I've previously said that the Safety Car and Base Car perform identical to one another, but upon spending more time with the cars, I've come to see that that isn't the case. The SC has Type A front, side, rear, and wing options of the BC applied by default, and only the wing can be removed. As a result, the SC has just a hint more downforce than the BC, up from 40/60 to 60/60 F/R, neither adjustable by default. While the BC sports very fitting Titanium twin 5–spoke wheels, the SC instead has black forged cross–spoke wheels, and to my knowledge, this is the only instance of an option wheel being fitted on a variation of a car, and it's so, so cool to see. I just wish there was an option to swap wheels between both cars if they've gone through all that effort to scan the wheels!
Despite sporting no discernible difference on the settings sheets aside from the slightly different downforce, the BC and SC drive notably different on a track; the SC is just a tad bit more eager to bite in to hunt an apex, but at the cost of being the same bit more tail happy on corner exit. It might be easy to point to the increased front downforce for this difference in behaviour, but said difference becomes apparent at speeds as middling as 120km/h (75mph). I've even tried matching downforce numbers on both cars via aftermarket parts, but I still couldn't get their PP values to align. It seems like there are more changes beyond visible numbers made to the two cars, but for what reason? I couldn't tell you.
Whichever AMG GT you go for, though, it's exactly what it says on the tin: an excruciatingly beautiful GT car with on–track capabilities belying its unshakable demeanour, spec sheet, and category. In short, it's a "Sleeper and a Keeper", to borrow Baron's catchphrase. But, beyond its tangible hardware, the AMG GT S scores straight tens in the emotional checklist as well—It makes its driver feel all the right, magical things a car lover looks for in a car, and while that's something that's impossible to put into words, it's very much a sure sign that the folks at Mercedes not only know what they're doing, but they're car lovers as well. To me, the AMG GT S is a masterpiece as it is, and it doesn't need more of anything.
For as fast as the cult classic, 3rd–generation "FD3S" RX-7 could move on a racetrack, one thing it absolutely sucked at doing was moving off dealership floors, for which its upmarket price tag was the easiest to blame. With the sudden burst of the economic bubble in their past and stricter emission standards in their future, Mazda very clearly red the big, bold Kanji on the wall: the next Rotary sports car had to be cheaper and burn a lot cleaner, which is to say that from conceptual stages, the next–generation RX sports car was never going to be as exciting or performance–oriented as the outgoing FD3S.
But what would be the next logical step from the supercar–harassing FD, if not something that can out–perform it? The most obvious answer would seem to be for the 4th–generation RX-7 to return to its roots, scaling back down in both cost and performance to something more akin to the 1st–generation SA/FB RX-7, a cheaper, smaller, and simpler sports car—but that seemingly obvious solution had an even more obvious problem: the Guinness World Record holder and brand new stable mate, the Roadster, which had the niche role of a cheap, simple, and affordable sports car steelclad in its minuscule boot. Thankfully however, common sense hadn't managed to stop the mad engineers at Mazda, who, in a borderline comical move, almost literally smushed an FD RX-7 and a NA Roadster together, resulting in my favourite concept car ever: the Mazda RX-01.
Unveiled at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, the RX-01 was to be a "back–to–basics" sports car that wrapped the timeless beauty of the FD3S around a Roadster–sized chassis... that was also somehow meant to be a 2+2, probably only for insurance bracket shenanigans. Beyond its questionable intent to carry four adults, the RX-01 offers other glimpses into the FD3S' eventual successor, most notably the red/black two–tone interior and novel wheels featuring Rotary triangles, but most significant of them all is the heart of the RX-01: a naturally aspirated 2–Rotor engine dubbed the "13B-MSP". Mazda claimed that this new engine was capable of 220HP, which is some 30HP down on what FDs were churning out at the time, sure, but said power only happened at rev ranges higher than the twin turbocharged FD could ever rev to in stock form: 8,500rpm! More importantly than that perhaps, is that the new engine had its intake and exhaust ports cut into its side housings instead of being on the peripheral housings, hence its name, "Multi Side Port". This reportedly helped the otherwise familiar 13B burn cleaner and improved fuel efficiency by eliminating intake and exhaust overlap, hopefully future proofing the new Wankel Engine. Absent the miles upon miles of pipes from the heinously complex twin sequential turbos, the powerplant could be mounted lower and closer to the cockpit of the car, so much so that a comically large pathway could be cut straight from its front bumper to the middle of the bonnet, acting like an oversized front wing! (Or jaywalker Katana!)
Unfortunately, the RX-01 was not meant to be. In 1996, Ford acquired a controlling 33.4% stake in Mazda, laser focusing on profitability for the ailing company caught out by the burst of the economical bubble, thereby binning any development of a frivolous, low profit margin sports car. All hope for a Rotary sports car successor seemed completely lost, let alone one that could measure up to the FD3S. This however, hadn't sat well with those mad engineers at Mazda, which formed an unofficial, after hours team that secretly toiled away at making their dream sports car a reality—a tale that sounds eerily familiar to that of the XJ220 not a decade prior, except this time, the engineers managed to keep the defining engine of the car, but not the rest of it!
The 13B-MSP engine found itself nestled into a Frankensteined Roadster chassis with 4 doors, 4 seats, 2 bonnets, and a debilitating case of the Severe Acute Fugly Syndrome. Quite how that team came to the conclusion and design of a 4–door sedan with suicide doors to succeed the FD RX-7, I don't claim to know, but I do have a guess: Mazda engineers have historically been rather obsessed with Porsches, and so maybe one of them really, really liked the one–off 928 Studie H50. This new prototype of theirs was an FR sports car platform stretched out to fit four seats accessed via suicide doors, just like the Porsche's unborn child. It even kept the Studie H50's unfortunate transmission tunnel hump that extends through the cabin, dividing the rear seats into two. The skunkworks team came to know the car as the "cockroach car", presumably named for being something that refused to die no matter how much it was beat on by those that wanted it dead, gone, and out of sight. The engineers knew that if word of the cockroach car got out, they would be severely reprimanded at the very least, and were gambling with their careers to bring a Rotary sports car to market.
But, a prototype by any other name would be just as effective, because that unlikely package impressed who it needed to in an impromptu test drive around Mazda's testing facility: a racing enthusiast exec at Ford who worked as a test driver for Mazda, finally letting the monster born in the shadows see green light. The cockroach car was then given a more palatable name: "RX-EVOLV", for its reveal under the big lights of the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show. Sanding off its heinous looks and rough edges that hadn't been a priority in its development thus far, the RX-EVOLV eventually gave way to the RX-8 Concept cars, which Gran Turismo 4 players may already be familiar with. While I very much lament the loss of the RX-01, it probably was a happy coincidence for Mazda to not have sunk any more time and money into that tiny black hole, given the adhesives that were being inhaled at Hethel around that time, and it was probably a good call to not cannibalise on the Roadster's market share as well.
After a short year without a Rotary Engined car in Mazda's Japanese dealers, the Mazda RX-8 brought the Passion of Dr. Wankel back to showrooms worldwide with a passionate bang in 2003. With 4 doors, 4 seats, and 2 rotors, it was clearly distinct from the Roadster, but because it had 4 doors, 4 seats, and 0 turbos, it was never going to have its predecessor's raw numbers. What the RX-8 did have however, is the classic front engine, rear drive layout, a near perfect 50/50 weight distribution, a free revving, cleaner burning, naturally aspirated 2 rotor engine displacing 1,308cc and capable of 247HP at 8,500rpm (in its most powerful 6MT trim), a Torsen LSD as standard, double wishbones up front and a multilink rear suspension setup, ventilated disc brakes all four corners, and even a carbon propshaft for the 6MT models! All this ensured that the RX-8 still had the sporty spirit of the RX-7, if not its spec sheet numbers. Plus, to appeal to a wider market, the RX-8 actually came with basic electronic aids, like stability and traction control, which the RX-7 never had. And, hey, it didn't have the FD's price tag, either: comparing the top of the line grades of both models, the RX-7 Type RS had a suggested retail price of ¥3,778,000. The RX-8 Type S' suggested retail price? Just ¥2,750,000—cheaper than even the cheapest FD.
So, it's cheaper, and burns a lot cleaner than the FD. Sounds like the RX-8 achieved all of its goals, then?
Unlike the RX-01, or indeed most other sports cars, the RX-8 could even carry four adults, though this rather depends on the front seat positions, and if the occupants are Asian sized or not. Almost as though trying to steal the novelty spotlight away from the Rotary Engine itself, the RX-8's most distinct and readily visible quirk are in its rear–hinged rear half doors, which Mazda dubbed as "Freestyle Doors". With the front doors opening forward as usual, the tiny rear doors swing backwards to an ample 80°—almost perpendicular to the car—to allow for a single, expansive entry point into the car, uninterrupted by a traditional B–pillar in the middle. This not only helps with ingress and egress, but also allows the rear doors to be much shorter in length to retain sports car proportions and minimise wheelbase.
Of course, as with any novel way of doing things, the Freestyle Doors of the RX-8 come with their fair share of quirks and trade–offs that might take some getting used to. Absent a traditional B–pillar, the rear doors have a load bearing column built into them to act as a B–pillar, with the rear doors latching onto both the roof and bottom of the car to become a key structural member in the event of a side impact. While the RX-8 did manage a 4/5 star rating in NHTSA's side impact test, the rear doors still can't be opened without the corresponding front door opening first, as the front doors latch onto the rears, hiding their door handles. The front seatbelts are also hinged on the rear doors as well, meaning the front occupants would have to undo their seatbelts before opening the rear doors, lest they get choked out by their own kids for their inheritance of the RX-8. In the event of a crash that jams the front doors, the rears essentially get jammed as well, and to account for this, the front seats of the RX-8 fold forward to allow the rear occupants an escape route, but it's still a scary thought with deployed airbags and maybe even unconscious front occupants.
And, before you ask, here's how little the tiny rear windows open.
So, the novelty Freestyle Doors are there to minimise wheelbase and maintain sports car proportions, but why the raised transmission tunnel that allows the car to only seat four? Sportiness, obviously! With 4 doors and 4 seats, it goes without saying that the wheelbase of the RX-8 is longer than that of the FD3S; 275mm longer in fact, at 2,700mm. Coupled with the lack of a B–pillar, the car's structural rigidity is a pressing concern, both for driving dynamics and safety. Even the 2–door FD had long struggled with rigidity issues before and after its launch, and its also the reason why the Studie H50 didn't make it past a single build. To this end, Mazda engineers made good use of the raised transmission tunnel that divides the left and right seats by making it act as a brace for the chassis, sheathing its already rigid "power plant frame" drivetrain. These, among other reinforcing structures, reportedly gave the RX-8 better structural strength in comparison to its less compromised and more focused predecessor in spite of its longer wheelbase, making the SE3P a much more surefooted and predictable drive than the FD3S, inspiring more confidence in me to bring it closer to its limits for much longer. This disparity in confidence only grows when both cars are tuned to go faster, making the RX-8 a much easier car to tune up to all but the most extreme levels of performance in my opinion. The only downside to the divided rear seats, of course, is perhaps best described by the wise and eloquent "Drift King" Tsuchiya Keiichi: "LOVE LOVE dekinai! NO CHANCE!"
But, as quirky as the Freestyle Doors and Rotary triangle motifs are, they're almost a red herring, a distraction, from the real weirdness of the RX-8, which naturally lies under the now single–piece bonnet—and no, I'm not even talking about the Rotary Engine itself. Despite lacking the twin sequential turbocharging system of the FD, the naturally aspirated RX-8 has its own sequential chicanery up its pipes: a Sequential Dynamic Air Intake System, or S-DAIS for short. Only equipped on the top of the line, "high power" spec engines with one extra intake and exhaust port per rotor over the standard engines, said S-DAIS electronically controls the intake port opening area and air intake length according to engine speed to emulate piston engine trickery like velocity trumpets and VVT, which Mazda claims to help with both low end life and high end oomph. Even the Le Mans conquering 787B racecar employed very similar trickery to achieve a shockingly balanced power curve for its naturally aspirated 4–Rotor, and absent the crutch of forced induction, the lessons learned from Mazda's tireless Le Mans efforts could finally trickle down onto a production sports car in the RX-8, and I think that is exceedingly cool. S-DAIS has too many phases to list even in this long writeup, but most crucially at 5,500rpm, another air intake upstream of the entire contraption opens up to provide max power for high revs. On a dry track, one most likely will never dip below that threshold, given the NA Rotary's notorious need to be revved out for whatever meagre power it can manage. On a wet road however, many drivers will use high gears and low revs to better manage power oversteer, and it's precisely in these low–grip scenarios where that 5,500rpm switchover can make itself prominent: that stealthy increase in power can very suddenly break loose the rear tyres in the wet, not helped by the NA Rotary's reputation for being gutless in low revs, meaning most drivers probably don't think much of mashing the noise pedal when the engine isn't screaming bloody murder.
This issue is only compounded by Mazda's "Super Torsen LSD" system fitted as standard on the RX-8 and some grades of its platform sibling, the NC Roadster. It works magic in the dry, but I find that it tends to overexaggerate rear end yaw moments in the wet. I vividly recall Jeremy Clarkson's review of the RX-8 on Top Gear, where he cites the rear end being "awfully twitchy" in the wet as one of the only real knocks against the car, and Super GT drivers testing the then new NC Roadster in Best Motoring under torrential downpour noted the same nervousness of the rear end, right after it threw "Drift King" Tsuchiya Keiichi off track at Tsukuba. In all three instances, the tyres are cited as a possible cause, but I genuinely think it's the diff: an aftermarket full custom LSD in the game set to the same arbitrary values as stock gives just a hint more understeer in the dry, but makes the car a lot more predictable in the wet. Granted, these are issues a person will only encounter when driving like a maniac in a canal with all aids off, but it's still very much worth mentioning, nonetheless.
The increased power and coolness that S-DAIS brings, Mazda's renowned shift action feel, and the Rotary Engine's inherent need to be revved out, all combine to mean that the 6MT is THE RX-8 to get if the driver is able to operate three pedals and a stick. The RX-8's insistence on being shifted by its driver even extends across the digital divide into Gran Turismo 7—while the Spirit R RX-8 in this game is indeed the 6MT with the high output engine spec, the game will prematurely climax at a mere 9k rpm if left to make its own bad decisions. Coupled with its extremely pure and engaging driving experience, the RX-8 Spirit R is one of the very, very few cars in the game that makes me want to turn off the in–game HUD when driving, because the HUD becomes genuinely annoying and distracting when trying to drive the car right. Switch that lying piece of crap off; it's not your friend. Shift the car by ear, but leave common sense at the Freestyle Doors. Rev it. Here's where a normal car really ought to have shifted, judging by the sound. Not yet. Hell no. Still not yet. Something sounds like it ought to have blown up by now. Still not yet. You steal a glance at the large, centre tachometer, the rev needle approaching the "9" digit, past which the entire tachometer turns red. Hit that. And then go past that still. Ignore that twisting sensation in your stomach that tells you you're breaking the car; the car needs this abuse to feel alive. Most gears are fine with being brought all the way to the car's 9,5 rev limit, but the extremely close 4th to 5th shift I find is best done at around 9,2.
In my reviews of the turbocharged FC and FD RX-7s, I've said that the beeper traditionally built into those cars to remind drivers to upshift is unnecessary at best and annoying at worst. That's because those turbocharged rotaries have a somewhat sensible 8,000rpm rev limit, and have their boost set in a way to give well balanced power across the mid to high range, instead of hiding it all up top, meaning that I often shift before the beeper even comes on in those cars. Here in the RX-8 however, that beeper is more than necessary, as the naturally aspirated unit revs to a common sense defying 9,500rpm, near which the engine always needs to be kept, and a beeper to reaffirm to the driver that they aren't going to blow the car up would be a super nice thing to have when getting used to the car. But, wouldn't you know it, when it's needed the most, the bloody beeper of the RX-8 isn't reproduced in Gran Turismo 7!
In 2008, the RX-8 received a facelift that mainly targeted QoL improvements. Dynamically, the chassis was strengthened even further, but max power was actually lowered from 247HP to 232HP, in so doing also slightly making the engine less peaky, with peak power coming in at 8,2 instead of 8,5. Peak torque stayed completely unchanged though, maintaining 216N⋅m (159.3lbf⋅ft) at 5,5. To compensate for the lowered power, the 6MT models got a shortened final gear ratio for snappier acceleration. Visually, the facelift finally brought back the RX-01's funky Rotary Triangle wheels, the swapping of which to other wheel designs ought to be a crime. They ditched the rather "meh" Winning Blue Metallic and Stormy Blue Mica for the astounding Aurora Blue Mica. That's... probably not a big deal to anyone but me. I just want to complain about the utterly boneheaded decision for the Spirit R RX-8 to not be offered with any paint choices containing hue. I mean, come on, Mazda. You know I love you guys, but nani the actual heck were you kangaetoru when deciding that the RX-8 Spirit R should only come in white, black, or silver? I know it's the sendoff model for the Rotary sports car, but you didn't have to make the paint options resemble the dress code of a freaking funeral...
As is customary with Mazda sports cars, a few special editions of the car were released in its life cycle, featuring mostly aesthetic changes, but the ones that went beyond that were exceptionally cool: the RX-8 Type S could actually be fitted with an NR-A package for a cost, which would quite literally turn the RX-8 into a road–legal racecar, qualifying the car for entry into a grassroots RX-8 one–make race held in Japan, similar to the Roadster NR-A. Can you imagine rocking up to a trackday, bro, with a pink roll cage that completely blocks off the still existing rear seats? Heck, if you'd like to sacrifice all boot space instead, you could stuff a tank of hydrogen back there: the RX-8 Hydrogen RE is an RX-8 with minimal modifications to run on either hydrogen or gasoline, offering drivers the choice via a switch in the centre console (in the shape of a Rotary triangle, naturally!).
The RX-8 may have been cheaper and burned cleaner than the RX-7, and in some scenarios, it could even carry four people. Heck, it drives well too, but there's one almost unsaid goal that the RX-8 hadn't managed to achieve: sell well. Even beyond its weird door and breathing shenanigans, the RX-8 is a completely bewildering prospect. It's a 247–at–most–HP car that only does a claimed 16 US MPG combined; freaking muscle cars can match that with thrice the RX-8's displacement. For raw sportiness and outright pace, the immaculate S2000 has the RX-8 whooped any day of the week. For practicality and performance, a WRX STi or even a Crown Athlete would outdo the RX-8. For cheap fun without reliability being a worrying concern, hell, there's always the Roadster.
But, honestly? Caring about any of that is missing the point of the RX-8 entirely.
Its original ragtag team of engineers knew this better than anyone: the RX-8 is a car that's meant to be driven, and driven hard. I don't even mean, "spirited driving" kind of hard; I mean, "drive it to and past its limits on a track" hard. Then, and only then, does the car start to make its case. As if a peaky car with a 9,5 rev limit needed this to be spelled out! The RX-8 sits squarely in a very narrow window of performance that I consider to be THE sweet spot for sports cars, populated by the industry's best of the best of any era, such as the 901 Carrera RS, M3 Sport Evo, and S2000. At this performance level, I opine that the engine has enough personality to stand out, but not dominate the entire experience. Fast enough to excite, but not too fast to become dangerous and unapproachable. Given the right amount of grip, these power levels can form a symbiotic dance with the chassis, allowing their drivers to be surgically neat, smooth, and well behaved to put on a driving clinic, or to swing the entirely opposite direction to cause utter mayhem should the driver so wish. Everything at this speed happens with just enough of a warning and transition to really communicate with the driver and to be a raw, engaging, and mechanical drive, the likes of which the industry might never see again, chasing after spec sheet numbers while being choked by ever tightening regulations.
The RX-8 may perform at a similar level to the aforementioned hall of fame cars, but it's a slight bit more muted and sedate to drive than those benchmarks. Make no mistake, however, that the RX-8 still fits all those lofty descriptions I laid out in the previous paragraph. What the RX-8 offers in exchange for sheer, raw sportiness is a driving experience that combines the seemingly impossible mix of becalming and exciting. The RX-8 will never get away from its driver on a dry, paved road. It will never let go unless specifically asked to. It remains composed over bumps, adverse camber, and silly elevation changes. It just promptly does whatever is asked of it without complaints or even hints of stress; only an enthusiastically talkative car juxtaposed into an almost therapeutically calm drive at reckless speeds, done almost entirely with intuitive, communicative mechanical engineering. Its brakes are strong. The front end feels less like commandeering a 1.4 tonne hunk of metal to manoeuvre a bend via a steering wheel, and more like me reaching my hand down to the pavement and then drawing a precise line through the road as I please. The rear end helpfully comes around ever so slightly when trail braking, proportionately rotating the car to my brake and steering input to rotate the car into an apex, and it can be reined back in with a mere thought should the driver misjudge it. The amount of trust it so effortlessly earns from me is just stupid, reckless, even. It never feels urgent; just brisk, like a jog with a loved one.
To me, 95% of my appreciation for a sports car lies in its last 5% of its handling envelope, and it's here that the RX-8 shames the vast majority of sports cars, regardless of era. While other cars just give up with instant, surrendering understeer or lash out with fumbling oversteer, the RX-8 instead meekly hints at the driver of its stress, speaking up politely to inform its driver of the things that are upsetting it if ignored, before drafting with its driver the terms and conditions of the controlled, staggered cessation of grip, effective immediately at the driver's convenience in a readily terminable contract if push comes to shove. It's such a clear communicator that it made me hyper aware for the first time, how smaller things like different wheel sizes affect a car's handling, and how awful Sports tyres are in this game, because they seem to let go so suddenly at their limit. I much prefer my RX-8 on Comfort Soft tyres, because those let go a lot slower and are more communicative. It's such a well–mannered, charismatic, and effective communicator of a sports car, the likes of which makes other supposed sports cars look like uncultured, boorish swine, and I suspect that's why I don't often like cars we test. Often, after I test a car that left a really bad taste in my mouth or even made me angry, I just want to slip into my RX-8 and just... drive. Forget. Heal, even. It's impossible to be mad when driving a working RX-8. It's almost like my automotive tea: so neutral and understated on its own, but has an amazing capability to wash away stronger flavours and reset a person's palate. In so doing, the RX-8 inadvertently becomes a standard to which other cars are compared to and judged against. That "automotive tea" of mine used to be the FD RX-7, but I think my obsessive longing for the RX-8 after work the past three weeks have told me that the RX-8 has succeeded that role for the 7 in my mind. In other words, I genuinely believe that the RX-8 drives better than the FD RX-7, and that's coming from someone who came to love cars because of the FD, and spent almost his entire life idolising and yearning for one. The RX-8 might not be nearly as photogenic as the FD, but every time after I drive my RX-8, I just sit and stare at it with a dumb, wide grin on my face and think, "daaaaamn!" While the RX-7 left the factory built to be beautiful, the RX-8 drives so damn well that it becomes beautiful to me.
Isn't that the entire point of a sports car? To amaze its driver every drive, to engage and involve them, and make them laugh and smile? Every day for the past few weeks, as I end another monotonous day at work, my body longs for, my soul yearns for the unshakable embrace of the RX-8 to wash it all away. It's impossible to be upset or mad when driving a working RX-8. I don't have any goals to achieve with it. I have nowhere to drive it to. Get that nonsensical HUD off the screen, forget the irrelevant time deltas. I just want to watch the rev needle climb and fall. I just want to hear the smooth wail of the Rotary Engine at 9,5, the wait, the anticipation, that feeling of "this ought to have blown up by now, what the hell?", never gets old. I want to be swept away in the exciting flow of its calm waters. And that, I think, is a sure sign that the car has become more than the sum of its parts, becoming an art form I can't explain or rationalise. Mazda have taken something that ought to be a subjective notion—driving pleasure—and not only perfected it into a science, but distilled it into artistic performance. There is nothing in it I want to change, nor anything beyond it that really matters. I just want to drive it hard, as it is. And that, quite simply, makes it belong in an elite list of cars that one hand would be plenty to count with. I can't even begin to imagine what having a real one must be like, highs and lows alike. I was even on the fence on buying GT7 on the leadup to launch, with the RX-8 Spirit R being one of the three things that would make me instantly buy the game and a PS5 at the then inflated prices. And you know what, it was worth every penny and more.
The RX-8 makes no sense on paper. There is nothing here that appeals to the logical side of the human brain. I can't recommend it for its practicality. Its fuel economy is woeful. Horror stories of the car's reliability probably killed the car more than emission standards. I can't even recommend it in the game, where it will never break; it's roughly the same PP level as a goddamn GD Impreza STi for some stupid reason. You'll probably be wise to not buy the car, in the same way so many were wise to not have bought an FD RX-7, an NA NSX, McLaren F1, or an E30 M3. The same way a health conscious nut would avoid bubble tea. The same way a frugal person wouldn't ever pay for porn or music. The same way no rational person could ever find a reason to adopt a pet.
But if the RX-8 speaks to you, I think that makes you one of the luckiest people alive. When I see an RX-8, I don't see a confused, ugly car; I see a monster who had gone through hell, who almost didn't make it through to see the light of day, just trying its best to find a place to belong, and I just want to go over and give it a hug if I could. Its engineers risked their livelihoods to bring this to us, and god damn are they in a class of their own. The vast majority of the people who drive it most likely won't ever give it a proper chance to speak its weird language, and even when allowed to speak, even fewer would understand it. But the RX-8 spoke to me, loudly, clearly, convincingly, captivatingly, bewitchingly, hypnotising me each and every time. And now I feel like I can't live without it.
If Mazda engineers could make a 4–door sedan drive better than an FD RX-7, imagine what they could create if they had access to modern technology, with the creative liberty to create something like the FD RX-7, a no frills, raw sports car again, free of any constraints, political or financial. It's the reason why the RX-Vision doesn't sit well with me, and why I disagree with the direction of the Iconic SP; I want a no–nonsense, focused Rotary sports car from Mazda. I don't want them to care about having 4 doors, adopt an existing chassis, or to shoehorn a hybrid system into a sports car, because their engineers do their best work when they just go off and make what they want to. I know they have the talent and passion to make something truly exceptional before the Internal Combustion Engine becomes consigned to history. As one of the last few enthusiast–centric brands left in the market, I truly hope we get a no–compromise 2 door rotary sports car from Mazda before it's too late.
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