The Mazda RX-8 is a sports car manufactured by Mazda Motor Corporation. It first appeared in 2001 at the North American International Auto Show. It is the successor to the RX-7 and, like its predecessors in the RX range, it is powered by a Wankel engine. The RX-8 began North American sales in the 2004 model year.
The RX-8 has been campaigned and used in various racing series by privateers. It has seen a considerable amount of success, the most prominent of which being the 2008 and 2010 24 Hours of Daytona GT-class wins campaigned by SpeedSource Race Engineering. This victory also marks the 23rd endurance race win at Daytona by Mazda rotary-powered race car. While the cars are powered by the 20B rotary engines, the car is in fact built on a tube frame chassis and not on the production car.
Ryan Eversley won both races of the 2010 SCCA World Challenge Mid-Ohio Grand Prix in the touring car class.
Other racing series include the KONI Challenge Series in the Street
Tuner class. In the UK, the RX8 featured in the Mazda sponsored "Formula Women" series (2004), which involved all women drivers with slightly modified RX8s, and the RX8 was also run successfully in Britcar series endurance races (2005 / 2006) In Belgium, Mazda are currently sponsoring an RX8 silhouette racer in the GT series. The next generation rotary engine, dubbed "16X," is currently under development.
Rumours suggest that the RX-8 may be replaced by a new smaller, lighter, simpler rotary engine sports car set to compete with the likes of the upcoming Toyota FT-86. It is also rumored to use Mazda’s new 16X rotary engine which is said to be ‘quite a bit bigger’ than the current twin-rotor design.
Key points for the RX-8 successor include the introduction of direct injection technology. The new car will also have aluminium side housings, 1600cc capacity instead of 1304cc of the 13B RX-7 and RX-8 engine, and new engine dimensions with increased stroke and reduced rotor width for improved thermal efficiency
and more torque.Japanese reports and Autocar both claim that the next generation RX-8 will have around 290 horsepower. They also claim the car should weigh in at around 2800 lbs,
making it a true light-weight sports car.
The next generation RX-8 is currently in development, and should be in production by 2014
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