Comments by "Stephen Hendricks" (@stephenhendricks103) on "" video.

  1. I drove a Mazda RX-8 purchased new and owned for about five years. It was an "interesting" experience. The good. Excellent handling sports car. The tiny light weight engine and RWD made for near perfect weight distribution. With a 9000 rpm redline the experience on twisting backroads was not unlike piloting a 4 cylinder 600cc Japanese sportbike. From a distance the RX-8 looked like a coupe or even a 2 seat sports car. In reality it had 2 suicide doors for the back seat and actually accommodated a couple of rear seat passengers for at least an hour or so. All in all it was a beautiful car, inside and out. The bad. It was exhilarating to drive at 7000 RPM and above where it produced about 230 HP but it was a dog in stop and go traffic where revving the engine to 7000 RPM was a ridiculous way to drive. The rotary produced a dismal amount of low end torque, only 159 lbs-ft at its peak and the peak was at 5500 RPM. It was NOT a fun daily commuter in the near gridlock of Seattle. Fuel economy was atrocious. I managed to squeeze out 17-19 mpg with a well disciplined right foot but other owners I knew did their best to exceed 14 mpg. While the RX-8 could accommodate a couple of passengers in the backseat it was a somewhat complicated operation. The front door(s) had to be opened in order to open the rear door(s). Otherwise, the back seat was useful primarily for holding hostages. All of those weaknesses paled in comparison to the flooding issue. The rotary engine was equipped with a single spark plug. (The photos in the video appear to include 2 plugs. That may or may not solve the problem described below.) From a cold start it was absolutely essential that the engine be allowed to reach operating temperature before driving away to avoid stalling. Just as it was absolutely forbidden to turn off the engine before that point. Violation of those rules frequently resulted in the engine dying and unable to be restarted. Any effort to do so only fouled the plug and flooded the engine. Not a problem, you say? Wait a minute and try again? Nope. Once the plug was fouled the car could be left for weeks, even months, and would never ever start again. The only solution was to replace the spark plug. But doing so required putting the car on a lift. So a flooded engine meant trailering the vehicle to a dealer or another spot with a lift and someone familiar with the problem and an appropriate spark plug to replace it. I quickly learned to deal with the problem. But my wife refused to drive the RX-8 after she started the engine in a parking lot and then mistakenly turned it off requiring a tow to the dealer. In the last year of production Mazda finally dealt with the problem. They put a lighted warning message on the instrument cluster advising the driver not to turn off the engine until it reached an acceptable operating temperature. "Does it hurt when you do that? Then don't do that!" said the doctor. Perhaps these issues can be dealt with by using a rotary engine in conjunction with an electric motor. But I'm skeptical that a revised rotary engine is a great option in terms of offering great fuel economy. Perhaps the addition of battery power will allow a car to be driven while the rotary engine warms up. Mazda has decades of experience with the Wankel engine and perhaps using it in conjunction with electrification will finally produce a use for it that doesn't include significant shortcomings. I sincerely hope so but the track record of the Wankel engine in a consumer vehicle is not a happy one.
    1