Pelican Parts Forums

Now, no flaming is intended to start with this thread. I love the 911 and there's nothing that can replace it, it's that simple. Having said that, while on vacation i had the opportunity to test drive an rx-8 from a dealer. Let me lay down the story first. I happened to be wearing my porsche jacket when we went for the test drive, and a friend of mine was sitting in the back (the one in the market for a new car). Well while driving i engaged in some small talk with the salesman, it turns out that he's a porsche fan and used to lust over 911 sc's back in his day when they were new. So i told him that i had a red 83' sc and his eyes lit up. I'm not sure if that's what triggered it or maybe something else but then all of a sudden he tells me to go ahead and wind the car out.
So i got to really beat the car, here are my impressions. The rear seats, while present and are real buckets, have little to no leg room. The tach is placed in the center (where it should be) with the digital speedometer in the tach (lower right corner of the tach). Front seats are ultra comfortable, placement of the pedals, shifter, and wheel are exactly where they should be.
Now for the fun stuff, the six speed shifter shifts with the twitch of the wrist and all six gates are clearly defined. The new rotary sounds pretty good at idle, overall more quiet than i'm used to. Here's the kicker, for anyone who's got previous experience with rotaries won't believe this one, this thing makes torque. With the 9k redline, unlike the s2k, you can putt it with adequate torque at 3k, and still pull through 3rd and 4th gear up to higher revs without shifting. Downshift to bring up the revs to around 5k and up and this thing moves. It's no where near the pull level of the rx7 turbos, but for a NA rotary i was impressed.
It handled very well too, the rotary is even more tucked back in the engine bay then previous rotary cars, it's got extremely low polar moment of inertia and a very low center of gravity. Take it out on the highway and it'll point straight if you let the steering wheel go, but take a turn and you'll be surprised at how the slightest steering movement translates to redirecting the nose. Not as quick responding as the 11, but impressively close. But the suspension is extremely plush, not very sporty. So that means it was very nice over bumps but swayed too much through corners.
And if anyone is wondering, yes it's rwd. How do i know? Well besides the fact that the drive axles in the rear make it a bit obvious, i also managed to trip the traction computer a few times.

So what are the low's?
The rear seating leg room, the traction control that can't be turned off and is very annoying, the beeping sound that reminds you too shift if you come within 500rpm of the redline (which i managed to set off quite a few times), and the clutch which is very twitchy and makes the car easy to stall (it would be hell in traffic).

The highs?
The new rotary motor, undescribably smooth, sounds great, and pulls at almost any rpm (or so it feels). The front seats, the little hints all over the car of a rotary theme (the shifter is in the shape of a rotary), the big centralized tach, the nicely defined gates of the shifter, the netrual and user friendly handling, and in case i didn't mention it already, the engine.

The msrp of the one we drove was 29.5k with the grand touring package.
Grand touring package- Leather seats, bose 9 speaker sound system, sunroof, sports package included (which i didn't notice and thought was kind of useless), and other odds and ends.

So anyhow, the real question, how does it stack up to the sc. Well, i'd never trade the 11 in for it, but i'd drive one to school everyday in a heartbeat. It's not a true sports car, doesn't feel like one, not even close. The 911 is far more fun to drive, and it will probably do it faster i think. But i still got a thing for that rotary.