Not sure if you've seen this yet. . .
http://roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=39&article_id=1627
If you haven't heard the buzz yet, Road-&-Track's SPEED Magazine, hitting stores on the 26th, features an article by Editor Sam Mitani on Mazda's project Mazdaspeed RX-8. RotaryNews has known about this car for a while, in fact it was scheduled to be displayed at SevenStock 7, but an agreement with Road-&-Track kept it behind the roll up doors at the event.
So, now that the cat is out of the bag, and after speaking to Mazda, this is what we have for you (click through to read on):
This is a development project that members of Mazda's R&D team have been working on. Because our engineers also happen to be enthusiasts, they're never completely satisfied and they're always tuning and developing vehicles one step further. This car is not for general sale now or in the future.
We're not ready to confirm when - or even whether - a MAZDASPEED version of the RX-8 is coming. We're always looking to improve the power, styling and drivability of our vehicles in each successive generation, and we're certainly looking at ways of adding the MAZDASPEED-DNA to RX-8, but we are not ready to talk in more detail about it.
Mazda touched on some details about this particular car, though...
It is supercharged. Because of the location of the exhaust ports in the RENESIS rotary engine, it doesn't respond in quite the same way to turbocharging as earlier rotaries. Our team thought they'd experiment with supercharging for this project car.
Virtually everything on the car is custom-designed and built, including the bodywork, interior trim, suspension and exhaust. Our R&D team saw this project as an opportunity to take the RX-8 as far as they could, while still maintaining its streetability."


http://roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=39&article_id=1627
If you haven't heard the buzz yet, Road-&-Track's SPEED Magazine, hitting stores on the 26th, features an article by Editor Sam Mitani on Mazda's project Mazdaspeed RX-8. RotaryNews has known about this car for a while, in fact it was scheduled to be displayed at SevenStock 7, but an agreement with Road-&-Track kept it behind the roll up doors at the event.
So, now that the cat is out of the bag, and after speaking to Mazda, this is what we have for you (click through to read on):
This is a development project that members of Mazda's R&D team have been working on. Because our engineers also happen to be enthusiasts, they're never completely satisfied and they're always tuning and developing vehicles one step further. This car is not for general sale now or in the future.
We're not ready to confirm when - or even whether - a MAZDASPEED version of the RX-8 is coming. We're always looking to improve the power, styling and drivability of our vehicles in each successive generation, and we're certainly looking at ways of adding the MAZDASPEED-DNA to RX-8, but we are not ready to talk in more detail about it.
Mazda touched on some details about this particular car, though...
It is supercharged. Because of the location of the exhaust ports in the RENESIS rotary engine, it doesn't respond in quite the same way to turbocharging as earlier rotaries. Our team thought they'd experiment with supercharging for this project car.
Virtually everything on the car is custom-designed and built, including the bodywork, interior trim, suspension and exhaust. Our R&D team saw this project as an opportunity to take the RX-8 as far as they could, while still maintaining its streetability."