Mazda’s four seat suicide door sports car has usually taken the backseat to its closest rivals (such as the 350z) due to a myriad of reasons such as the less than stellar gas mileage, questionable reliability, and less than spectacular power in a straight line. However, it still has a stronghold over the market segment that consists of die hard rotary lovers and to a lesser extent, the autocross/canyon driving crowd. Fans of the RX8 will always bring up the razor sharp handling and superior driving feel, which they say will help the 8 leave any competitor in the dust when it comes to the turns.

The RX8 has been in production since 2003 and has been relatively unchanged except for the Shinka and the 40th Anniversary edition. Mazda has not spent much money on the continued development of this line, even distancing themselves from the car by omitting opinions of RX8 owners on dealership satisfaction tests (possibly due to the high percentage of RX8 engines replaced under warranty). That’s why their announcement of the RX8 R3 edition came as such a shock to me - most assumed that it was soon to be replaced by another model. Perhaps they are taking a page from Honda’s book, who released the CR edition of the S2000 on one of its last remaining production years?

The R3 edition brings a number of minor improvements such as additional chassis reinforcement, beefy strut tower reinforcement bars, new rear spoiler, 19 inch wheels, side strakes, and a new front bumper complete with foglamps.

A number of more expensive upgrades include the new Bilstein suspension, lower final drive gear for the manual cars (still can’t believe they make automatic RX8’s), and bucket seats from Recaro that look so slick that they might make this upgrade worth the money by themselves.

New owners are still advised against straight line racing… it’ll still be left behind by the S2000 (arguably its biggest rival) at the stoplight because the the RENESIS rotary still cranks out 232 horsepower

… and yes, shut the doors in the wrong order and you’ll still be making a trip to the bodyshop.