What the Mazda RX-8 should have been (new autocross car build)

[John V]

Sadly, no. I was supposed to go up to get it on Saturday but the guy let me know Friday evening that someone beat me to it.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by John V

unfortunately the fuel economy is so abysmal that they're just not practical as a day-to-day car

My notes indicate:

28,339 miles on 1,661 gallons = 17.06 MPG

"It got decent mileage on the road (we averaged about 22-23mpg on the road). It was comfortable and not fatiguing to do that kind of driving. It would have been nice to have more torque in daily driving, but it hardly ever presented a real problem. Daily driving mileage was abysmal, though (more than a handful of tanks under 11mpg and 13.5 being typical)."

A number of those tanks were largely short distance, low speed stop and go (with a lot more stop than go).

Compared to what I'm driving today, those numbers don't look too horrible. At least not until you consider that what I'm driving today weighs about 900 pounds more (3755 to 2888), makes about twice the power, three times the torque, and rides on much wider and sticker tires.

[John V]

That's just it. If I'm going to get mileage that bad, it had better have a V8 powerband.

Keisler just announced an update to his LFX swap kit that makes some serious improvements. I may need to really think about that.

[John V]

[JST]

Originally Posted by John V

Oh, snap.