Mazda is one of those companies just don't stop revolutionizing. First they got rotary to be actually usable. Now this.
But that never overcame their mediocre gas mileage (lack of compression/poor combustion chamber shape), oil burning (oil-lubricated apex seals), and need for frequent rebuilds.
I also could probably connect you with a good rotary mechanic (or several) in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico (hell, especially Puerto Rico)
The biggest issue with the FCs isn't the engine, it's the reliability of the electric systems and heat (as a distant second). With the FDs it pretty much the twin turbos. And with early RX-8s (04-early09) it's a lack of proper engine lubrication due to a design flaw.
Practicality was pretty low, though, as you rightly point out.
So always.
Here not only do I rarely see cops, I've read in the local papers that cops can't pull people over for speeding if EVERYONE is speeding. You have to be speeding far above average. So everyone is actually incentivized to speed together.
When I first got here I saw comically low speed limit signs - as low as 55mph on freeways! And averages of 65! That's INSANELY slow for how big these freeways are! But apparently it doesn't matter in California, here everyone just speeds and is protected as a group.
I don't doubt that I'll pay my dues eventually. You don't get away with 95mph on a sportbike forever. We make targets of ourselves. That's fine, in Houston I got ticketed ~200USD every three years or so, that's a fair price to get to go above the speed limit for me.
Western U. S.: whatever I think I can get away with. IOW, if I can see for multiple miles with few cross roads and driveways, then it's whatever I feel comfortable with. Though with western speed limits of 70mph and up, one can comfortably get away with 85mph, which is fast enough for me. Much beyond that, on the bike or in the car, and it gets tiring and the difference in fuel efficiency is huge (28mpg or less at "spirited" speeds on a bike that normally gets 42-45mpg). And the last thing one needs in a vehicle with a 5 gallon tank, and an area with few gas stations, is poor fuel efficiency. With increased fuel stops, I'm not convinced that one saves a minute of time after a point.
In this instance, think of the U. S. more like the EU. We have Montana and Nevada, they have Germany. We have Ohio, they have (for lack of a better example) the U. K. with speed cameras everywhere (yeah, yeah, Brexit; bear with me for this example).
I was thinking of the seals, which by about 50K seemed to be a common failure point. But, yes, they did burn a bit by design; no argument there. OTOH, a lot of Wankel defenders in this thread mention RX-8s. I'm remembering RX-7s, and the economy cars that used the Wankels. Those economy cars of the 70s are where the Wankel reputation for poor fuel mileage comes from. Cute TV commercials ("piston engine goes 'boing, boing, boing', Mazda engine goes 'hmmmmm'"), not really the best engine choice to go up against Honda and Toyota at the time.
So I think your opinions are a little bit overcooked.
But I don't want to overdo mine in turn. The fuel consumption is excessive by modern standards (but comparable to other vehicles of similar performance). The engine consumes oil by design and needs to be topped up every few weeks. The whole car is in a high state of tuning, and has given me a few large service/repair bills - but never stranded me at the roadside. My garage once admitted incomprehension and sent me to the main dealer for diagnostics before they could begin repairs.
All in all I think Mazda pitched the RX-8 well as a sporty car for enthusiasts, whose reliability might have come in under par in the market for, say, small family cars. I just want to fight the impression that having a rotary-engined car is a drastically different, worse, experience than one with a piston engine. Generally you just get in and drive.
Wankel engines are just one of (surprisingly many) technologies that were more-or-less viable but just not able to become dominant. Like, we would all still manage to drive around if the only technologies developed happened to be opposed-piston engines, or two-stroke diesels, or axial-cylinder engines with a swashplate. We might even see a few of them come back if the market moves towards series-hybrid vehicle setups. A light little rotary always running at its peak-efficiency speed might be a reasonable choice for a range-extender/series hybrid.
http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine.html
It was not, in the end, a production car, but there was a lot of data gathered as to performance and reliability in real-world settings.
Not too long ago, Jaguar had a concept CX-75, which was a hybrid mid-engined supercar where the piston engine was replaced with two Bladon Jets micro gas turbines. After 2008, they didn't want to commit to an expensive limited production vehicle, too bad.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/18-october-2010/jet-pow...
YMMV, but my E46 BMW has been very reliable compared to an RX-8 bought at the same time. Audi was still in the process of applying the lessons of the RS4 to their everyday cars, but I still wouldn't call the RX-8 reliable compared to its peers. As you hinted, there are a couple of problems that lead to full rebuilds before 150k miles.
* Underspec'd the ignition coils
* Didn't do enough on-road reliability testing
* Lowered the oil pressure and removed OMP ports
* Designed the oil filler breather in a way that allowed oil into the intake
In '04, the first wave of RX8s were coming in to the dealerships after 30k with severe misfire from the coils going bad. Mazda didn't have this failure mode in their factory service manual, so the cars got replacement engines (poorly reman'd in Mexico, not made on the Mazda Japan line). These didn't last because of poor manufacturing. Once the coil issue was figured out, the 8 became much more predictable and reliable.
As noted by Busterarm, they fully got their act together with the series 2 update.
[I own an '04 RX8 with ~130k miles)
Pull and rebuild is pretty easy though.
Lots of torque, lots of pep, though from what I heard, the US version (mine) had substantial increases in pollution controls which hobbled the car. Always first off the line when I wanted to be.
Yes, it burned oil by design. I'd add a half-quart of non synthetic 5W-20 maybe every 1000 miles. The rear bumper required additional car washes, as it'd get a black film, no doubt from cold starts. That wasn't much of a problem.
The big issue it had was flooding the engine. To trigger the condition, turn on engine, let it run for less than 1 minute, and turn it off (like pulling it in or out of a garage). Unless you floored it in neutral before shutting it off, the car would end up near-bricked.
The fix was to have it towed to the dealer where they'd clean out the engine for a few hundred dollars. Later I learned you could tow-start it if you could get it up past 20mph. It'd put all kinds of foul smoke out the back when you did that but in terms of hassle, it was much better.
The car had a POS OEM fuel pump under the rear seat. On hot days you'd get a vapor lock. Not the rotary's fault. Took years to find that problem, and didn't get very long with the fixed version before the stork came and the rotary had to leave.
One of my friends had an rx-8, the backseats were useless for adults, but glorious for car seats.
You don't need to do all that. You can just pull the EGI INJ & EGI COMP fuse, crank it for a few seconds, replace and start it up. Many folks put a bypass switch inside the car so they don't have to get out and do it. Works great.
Also, yeah, I had my RX-8 tow started once. The recovery guy actually suggested I drive his truck while he sat in the car and tried to start it. So there I was with the new experience of driving an enormous full-size recovery vehicle, getting quite concerned as I looked in the mirror and saw clouds of white smoke pouring out of my car's exhaust! But, once properly wary of flooding, the car didn't give me any trouble before or since.
First off, I agree that the backseat was exceptionally roomy for a 4-door coupe. For adults.
Once you have your first, you realize very quickly that babies come with a LOT of stuff. The first carrier for newborns sticks out a LOT from the back of the seat. The sorcerers at Mazda Engineering made it comfortable for tall people in the backseat by compensating for limited front-back space by using up-down space. This made it impossible for use for an infant unless the front seat was scooted all the way up.
But then there's the stroller. Good luck with that in the comically small trunk opening. Bags of stuff, boxes of stuff, yes, these things are non-optional, and they don't fit in that car, especially all at once.
The final nail was the fact that it's kinda hard to insert a child plus carrier into the backseat with your hands full. Having it back there would've been easy. Getting it back there wouldn't have been. Retrieving it, even more difficult.
After you make your peace with the above, and still manage to cram everything in, bear in mind you still need two adults, not just the driver, to fit in the car at the same time.
We could've done it, somehow, but it was smarter to sell it and buy a cheap used SUV, with plenty of room for everything. It also bears mention that I had used that car as a daily driver for 10 years.
Then it was licensed to many manufacturers, among which there was Mercedes-Benz, which was the manufacturer who got solved first the apex seal problem, and in the late 70s with the C111 prototype car, the first manufacturer to create a side port wankel engine (which mazda would only show on the RX8 decades later) and a 4-rotor engine (which mazda would only show on the 787 racing car in 1991.
Then MB ditched the wankel engine because of low fuel efficience, something that ultimately led to mazda doing the same... in the 2000s.
Skyactiv exists in the first place because Mazda does not have the money or engineering resources to build a hybrid or electric car by themselves. I suspect that in a decade or two, Mazda's decision not to start building hybrids and electric cars when the other major brands were doing so will be regarded as a serious mistake.