Car of the Week | Week 55: 20/20 Vision (Maserati MC20 '20) (2024)

For as fast as the cult classic, 3rd–generation "FD3S" RX-7 could move on a racetrack, one thing it absolutely sucked at doing was moving off dealership floors, for which its upmarket price tag was the easiest to blame. With the sudden burst of the economic bubble in their past and stricter emission standards in their future, Mazda very clearly red the big, bold Kanji on the wall: the next Rotary sports car had to be cheaper and burn a lot cleaner, which is to say that from conceptual stages, the next–generation RX sports car was never going to be as exciting or performance–oriented as the outgoing FD3S.

But what would be the next logical step from the supercar–harassing FD, if not something that can out–perform it? The most obvious answer would seem to be for the 4th–generation RX-7 to return to its roots, scaling back down in both cost and performance to something more akin to the 1st–generation SA/FB RX-7, a cheaper, smaller, and simpler sports car—but that seemingly obvious solution had an even more obvious problem: the Guinness World Record holder and brand new stable mate, the Roadster, which had the niche role of a cheap, simple, and affordable sports car steelclad in its minuscule boot. Thankfully however, common sense hadn't managed to stop the mad engineers at Mazda, who, in a borderline comical move, almost literally smushed an FD RX-7 and a NA Roadster together, resulting in my favourite concept car ever: the Mazda RX-01.

Unveiled at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, the RX-01 was to be a "back–to–basics" sports car that wrapped the timeless beauty of the FD3S around a Roadster–sized chassis... that was also somehow meant to be a 2+2, probably only for insurance bracket shenanigans. Beyond its questionable intent to carry four adults, the RX-01 offers other glimpses into the FD3S' eventual successor, most notably the red/black two–tone interior and novel wheels featuring Rotary triangles, but most significant of them all is the heart of the RX-01: a naturally aspirated 2–Rotor engine dubbed the "13B-MSP". Mazda claimed that this new engine was capable of 220HP, which is some 30HP down on what FDs were churning out at the time, sure, but said power only happened at rev ranges higher than the twin turbocharged FD could ever rev to in stock form: 8,500rpm! More importantly than that perhaps, is that the new engine had its intake and exhaust ports cut into its side housings instead of being on the peripheral housings, hence its name, "Multi Side Port". This reportedly helped the otherwise familiar 13B burn cleaner and improved fuel efficiency by eliminating intake and exhaust overlap, hopefully future proofing the new Wankel Engine. Absent the miles upon miles of pipes from the heinously complex twin sequential turbos, the powerplant could be mounted lower and closer to the co*ckpit of the car, so much so that a comically large pathway could be cut straight from its front bumper to the middle of the bonnet, acting like an oversized front wing! (Or jaywalker Katana!)

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Unfortunately, the RX-01 was not meant to be. In 1996, Ford acquired a controlling 33.4% stake in Mazda, laser focusing on profitability for the ailing company caught out by the burst of the economical bubble, thereby binning any development of a frivolous, low profit margin sports car. All hope for a Rotary sports car successor seemed completely lost, let alone one that could measure up to the FD3S. This however, hadn't sat well with those mad engineers at Mazda, which formed an unofficial, after hours team that secretly toiled away at making their dream sports car a reality—a tale that sounds eerily familiar to that of the XJ220 not a decade prior, except this time, the engineers managed to keep the defining engine of the car, but not the rest of it!

The 13B-MSP engine found itself nestled into a Frankensteined Roadster chassis with 4 doors, 4 seats, 2 bonnets, and a debilitating case of the Severe Acute Fugly Syndrome. Quite how that team came to the conclusion and design of a 4–door sedan with suicide doors to succeed the FD RX-7, I don't claim to know, but I do have a guess: Mazda engineers have historically been rather obsessed with Porsches, and so maybe one of them really, really liked the one–off 928 Studie H50. This new prototype of theirs was an FR sports car platform stretched out to fit four seats accessed via suicide doors, just like the Porsche's unborn child. It even kept the Studie H50's unfortunate transmission tunnel hump that extends through the cabin, dividing the rear seats into two. The skunkworks team came to know the car as the "co*ckroach car", presumably named for being something that refused to die no matter how much it was beat on by those that wanted it dead, gone, and out of sight. The engineers knew that if word of the co*ckroach car got out, they would be severely reprimanded at the very least, and were gambling with their careers to bring a Rotary sports car to market.

But, a prototype by any other name would be just as effective, because that unlikely package impressed who it needed to in an impromptu test drive around Mazda's testing facility: a racing enthusiast exec at Ford who worked as a test driver for Mazda, finally letting the monster born in the shadows see green light. The co*ckroach car was then given a more palatable name: "RX-EVOLV", for its reveal under the big lights of the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show. Sanding off its heinous looks and rough edges that hadn't been a priority in its development thus far, the RX-EVOLV eventually gave way to the RX-8 Concept cars, which Gran Turismo 4 players may already be familiar with. While I very much lament the loss of the RX-01, it probably was a happy coincidence for Mazda to not have sunk any more time and money into that tiny black hole, given the adhesives that were being inhaled at Hethel around that time, and it was probably a good call to not cannibalise on the Roadster's market share as well.

After a short year without a Rotary Engined car in Mazda's Japanese dealers, the Mazda RX-8 brought the Passion of Dr. Wankel back to showrooms worldwide with a passionate bang in 2003. With 4 doors, 4 seats, and 2 rotors, it was clearly distinct from the Roadster, but because it had 4 doors, 4 seats, and 0 turbos, it was never going to have its predecessor's raw numbers. What the RX-8 did have however, is the classic front engine, rear drive layout, a near perfect 50/50 weight distribution, a free revving, cleaner burning, naturally aspirated 2 rotor engine displacing 1,308cc and capable of 247HP at 8,500rpm (in its most powerful 6MT trim), a Torsen LSD as standard, double wishbones up front and a multilink rear suspension setup, ventilated disc brakes all four corners, and even a carbon propshaft for the 6MT models! All this ensured that the RX-8 still had the sporty spirit of the RX-7, if not its spec sheet numbers. Plus, to appeal to a wider market, the RX-8 actually came with basic electronic aids, like stability and traction control, which the RX-7 never had. And, hey, it didn't have the FD's price tag, either: comparing the top of the line grades of both models, the RX-7 Type RS had a suggested retail price of ¥3,778,000. The RX-8 Type S' suggested retail price? Just ¥2,750,000—cheaper than even the cheapest FD.

So, it's cheaper, and burns a lot cleaner than the FD. Sounds like the RX-8 achieved all of its goals, then?

Unlike the RX-01, or indeed most other sports cars, the RX-8 could even carry four adults, though this rather depends on the front seat positions, and if the occupants are Asian sized or not. Almost as though trying to steal the novelty spotlight away from the Rotary Engine itself, the RX-8's most distinct and readily visible quirk are in its rear–hinged rear half doors, which Mazda dubbed as "Freestyle Doors". With the front doors opening forward as usual, the tiny rear doors swing backwards to an ample 80°—almost perpendicular to the car—to allow for a single, expansive entry point into the car, uninterrupted by a traditional B–pillar in the middle. This not only helps with ingress and egress, but also allows the rear doors to be much shorter in length to retain sports car proportions and minimise wheelbase.

Of course, as with any novel way of doing things, the Freestyle Doors of the RX-8 come with their fair share of quirks and trade–offs that might take some getting used to. Absent a traditional B–pillar, the rear doors have a load bearing column built into them to act as a B–pillar, with the rear doors latching onto both the roof and bottom of the car to become a key structural member in the event of a side impact. While the RX-8 did manage a 4/5 star rating in NHTSA's side impact test, the rear doors still can't be opened without the corresponding front door opening first, as the front doors latch onto the rears, hiding their door handles. The front seatbelts are also hinged on the rear doors as well, meaning the front occupants would have to undo their seatbelts before opening the rear doors, lest they get choked out by their own kids for their inheritance of the RX-8. In the event of a crash that jams the front doors, the rears essentially get jammed as well, and to account for this, the front seats of the RX-8 fold forward to allow the rear occupants an escape route, but it's still a scary thought with deployed airbags and maybe even unconscious front occupants.

And, before you ask, here's how little the tiny rear windows open.

So, the novelty Freestyle Doors are there to minimise wheelbase and maintain sports car proportions, but why the raised transmission tunnel that allows the car to only seat four? Sportiness, obviously! With 4 doors and 4 seats, it goes without saying that the wheelbase of the RX-8 is longer than that of the FD3S; 275mm longer in fact, at 2,700mm. Coupled with the lack of a B–pillar, the car's structural rigidity is a pressing concern, both for driving dynamics and safety. Even the 2–door FD had long struggled with rigidity issues before and after its launch, and its also the reason why the Studie H50 didn't make it past a single build. To this end, Mazda engineers made good use of the raised transmission tunnel that divides the left and right seats by making it act as a brace for the chassis, sheathing its already rigid "power plant frame" drivetrain. These, among other reinforcing structures, reportedly gave the RX-8 better structural strength in comparison to its less compromised and more focused predecessor in spite of its longer wheelbase, making the SE3P a much more surefooted and predictable drive than the FD3S, inspiring more confidence in me to bring it closer to its limits for much longer. This disparity in confidence only grows when both cars are tuned to go faster, making the RX-8 a much easier car to tune up to all but the most extreme levels of performance in my opinion. The only downside to the divided rear seats, of course, is perhaps best described by the wise and eloquent "Drift King" Tsuchiya Keiichi: "LOVE LOVE dekinai! NO CHANCE!"

But, as quirky as the Freestyle Doors and Rotary triangle motifs are, they're almost a red herring, a distraction, from the real weirdness of the RX-8, which naturally lies under the now single–piece bonnet—and no, I'm not even talking about the Rotary Engine itself. Despite lacking the twin sequential turbocharging system of the FD, the naturally aspirated RX-8 has its own sequential chicanery up its pipes: a Sequential Dynamic Air Intake System, or S-DAIS for short. Only equipped on the top of the line, "high power" spec engines with one extra intake and exhaust port per rotor over the standard engines, said S-DAIS electronically controls the intake port opening area and air intake length according to engine speed to emulate piston engine trickery like velocity trumpets and VVT, which Mazda claims to help with both low end life and high end oomph. Even the Le Mans conquering 787B racecar employed very similar trickery to achieve a shockingly balanced power curve for its naturally aspirated 4–Rotor, and absent the crutch of forced induction, the lessons learned from Mazda's tireless Le Mans efforts could finally trickle down onto a production sports car in the RX-8, and I think that is exceedingly cool. S-DAIS has too many phases to list even in this long writeup, but most crucially at 5,500rpm, another air intake upstream of the entire contraption opens up to provide max power for high revs. On a dry track, one most likely will never dip below that threshold, given the NA Rotary's notorious need to be revved out for whatever meagre power it can manage. On a wet road however, many drivers will use high gears and low revs to better manage power oversteer, and it's precisely in these low–grip scenarios where that 5,500rpm switchover can make itself prominent: that stealthy increase in power can very suddenly break loose the rear tyres in the wet, not helped by the NA Rotary's reputation for being gutless in low revs, meaning most drivers probably don't think much of mashing the noise pedal when the engine isn't screaming bloody murder.

This issue is only compounded by Mazda's "Super Torsen LSD" system fitted as standard on the RX-8 and some grades of its platform sibling, the NC Roadster. It works magic in the dry, but I find that it tends to overexaggerate rear end yaw moments in the wet. I vividly recall Jeremy Clarkson's review of the RX-8 on Top Gear, where he cites the rear end being "awfully twitchy" in the wet as one of the only real knocks against the car, and Super GT drivers testing the then new NC Roadster in Best Motoring under torrential downpour noted the same nervousness of the rear end, right after it threw "Drift King" Tsuchiya Keiichi off track at Tsukuba. In all three instances, the tyres are cited as a possible cause, but I genuinely think it's the diff: an aftermarket full custom LSD in the game set to the same arbitrary values as stock gives just a hint more understeer in the dry, but makes the car a lot more predictable in the wet. Granted, these are issues a person will only encounter when driving like a maniac in a canal with all aids off, but it's still very much worth mentioning, nonetheless.

The increased power and coolness that S-DAIS brings, Mazda's renowned shift action feel, and the Rotary Engine's inherent need to be revved out, all combine to mean that the 6MT is THE RX-8 to get if the driver is able to operate three pedals and a stick. The RX-8's insistence on being shifted by its driver even extends across the digital divide into Gran Turismo 7—while the Spirit R RX-8 in this game is indeed the 6MT with the high output engine spec, the game will prematurely climax at a mere 9k rpm if left to make its own bad decisions. Coupled with its extremely pure and engaging driving experience, the RX-8 Spirit R is one of the very, very few cars in the game that makes me want to turn off the in–game HUD when driving, because the HUD becomes genuinely annoying and distracting when trying to drive the car right. Switch that lying piece of crap off; it's not your friend. Shift the car by ear, but leave common sense at the Freestyle Doors. Rev it. Here's where a normal car really ought to have shifted, judging by the sound. Not yet. Hell no. Still not yet. Something sounds like it ought to have blown up by now. Still not yet. You steal a glance at the large, centre tachometer, the rev needle approaching the "9" digit, past which the entire tachometer turns red. Hit that. And then go past that still. Ignore that twisting sensation in your stomach that tells you you're breaking the car; the car needs this abuse to feel alive. Most gears are fine with being brought all the way to the car's 9,5 rev limit, but the extremely close 4th to 5th shift I find is best done at around 9,2.

In my reviews of the turbocharged FC and FD RX-7s, I've said that the beeper traditionally built into those cars to remind drivers to upshift is unnecessary at best and annoying at worst. That's because those turbocharged rotaries have a somewhat sensible 8,000rpm rev limit, and have their boost set in a way to give well balanced power across the mid to high range, instead of hiding it all up top, meaning that I often shift before the beeper even comes on in those cars. Here in the RX-8 however, that beeper is more than necessary, as the naturally aspirated unit revs to a common sense defying 9,500rpm, near which the engine always needs to be kept, and a beeper to reaffirm to the driver that they aren't going to blow the car up would be a super nice thing to have when getting used to the car. But, wouldn't you know it, when it's needed the most, the bloody beeper of the RX-8 isn't reproduced in Gran Turismo 7!

In 2008, the RX-8 received a facelift that mainly targeted QoL improvements. Dynamically, the chassis was strengthened even further, but max power was actually lowered from 247HP to 232HP, in so doing also slightly making the engine less peaky, with peak power coming in at 8,2 instead of 8,5. Peak torque stayed completely unchanged though, maintaining 216N⋅m (159.3lbf⋅ft) at 5,5. To compensate for the lowered power, the 6MT models got a shortened final gear ratio for snappier acceleration. Visually, the facelift finally brought back the RX-01's funky Rotary Triangle wheels, the swapping of which to other wheel designs ought to be a crime. They ditched the rather "meh" Winning Blue Metallic and Stormy Blue Mica for the astounding Aurora Blue Mica. That's... probably not a big deal to anyone but me. I just want to complain about the utterly boneheaded decision for the Spirit R RX-8 to not be offered with any paint choices containing hue. I mean, come on, Mazda. You know I love you guys, but nani the actual heck were you kangaetoru when deciding that the RX-8 Spirit R should only come in white, black, or silver? I know it's the sendoff model for the Rotary sports car, but you didn't have to make the paint options resemble the dress code of a freaking funeral...

As is customary with Mazda sports cars, a few special editions of the car were released in its life cycle, featuring mostly aesthetic changes, but the ones that went beyond that were exceptionally cool: the RX-8 Type S could actually be fitted with an NR-A package for a cost, which would quite literally turn the RX-8 into a road–legal racecar, qualifying the car for entry into a grassroots RX-8 one–make race held in Japan, similar to the Roadster NR-A. Can you imagine rocking up to a trackday, bro, with a pink roll cage that completely blocks off the still existing rear seats? Heck, if you'd like to sacrifice all boot space instead, you could stuff a tank of hydrogen back there: the RX-8 Hydrogen RE is an RX-8 with minimal modifications to run on either hydrogen or gasoline, offering drivers the choice via a switch in the centre console (in the shape of a Rotary triangle, naturally!).

The RX-8 may have been cheaper and burned cleaner than the RX-7, and in some scenarios, it could even carry four people. Heck, it drives well too, but there's one almost unsaid goal that the RX-8 hadn't managed to achieve: sell well. Even beyond its weird door and breathing shenanigans, the RX-8 is a completely bewildering prospect. It's a 247–at–most–HP car that only does a claimed 16 US MPG combined; freaking muscle cars can match that with thrice the RX-8's displacement. For raw sportiness and outright pace, the immaculate S2000 has the RX-8 whooped any day of the week. For practicality and performance, a WRX STi or even a Crown Athlete would outdo the RX-8. For cheap fun without reliability being a worrying concern, hell, there's always the Roadster.

But, honestly? Caring about any of that is missing the point of the RX-8 entirely.

Its original ragtag team of engineers knew this better than anyone: the RX-8 is a car that's meant to be driven, and driven hard. I don't even mean, "spirited driving" kind of hard; I mean, "drive it to and past its limits on a track" hard. Then, and only then, does the car start to make its case. As if a peaky car with a 9,5 rev limit needed this to be spelled out! The RX-8 sits squarely in a very narrow window of performance that I consider to be

sweet spot for sports cars, populated by the industry's best of the best of any era, such as the 901 Carrera RS, M3 Sport Evo, and S2000. At this performance level, I opine that the engine has enough personality to stand out, but not dominate the entire experience. Fast enough to excite, but not too fast to become dangerous and unapproachable. Given the right amount of grip, these power levels can form a symbiotic dance with the chassis, allowing their drivers to be surgically neat, smooth, and well behaved to put on a driving clinic, or to swing the entirely opposite direction to cause utter mayhem should the driver so wish. Everything at this speed happens with just enough of a warning and transition to really communicate with the driver and to be a raw, engaging, and mechanical drive, the likes of which the industry might never see again, chasing after spec sheet numbers while being choked by ever tightening regulations.

The RX-8 may perform at a similar level to the aforementioned hall of fame cars, but it's a slight bit more muted and sedate to drive than those benchmarks. Make no mistake, however, that the RX-8 still fits all those lofty descriptions I laid out in the previous paragraph. What the RX-8 offers in exchange for sheer, raw sportiness is a driving experience that combines the seemingly impossible mix of becalming and exciting. The RX-8 will never get away from its driver on a dry, paved road. It will never let go unless specifically asked to. It remains composed over bumps, adverse camber, and silly elevation changes. It just promptly does whatever is asked of it without complaints or even hints of stress; only an enthusiastically talkative car juxtaposed into an almost therapeutically calm drive at reckless speeds, done almost entirely with intuitive, communicative mechanical engineering. Its brakes are strong. The front end feels less like commandeering a 1.4 tonne hunk of metal to manoeuvre a bend via a steering wheel, and more like me reaching my hand down to the pavement and then drawing a precise line through the road as I please. The rear end helpfully comes around ever so slightly when trail braking, proportionately rotating the car to my brake and steering input to rotate the car into an apex, and it can be reined back in with a mere thought should the driver misjudge it. The amount of trust it so effortlessly earns from me is just stupid, reckless, even. It never feels urgent; just brisk, like a jog with a loved one.

To me, 95% of my appreciation for a sports car lies in its last 5% of its handling envelope, and it's here that the RX-8 shames the vast majority of sports cars, regardless of era. While other cars just give up with instant, surrendering understeer or lash out with fumbling oversteer, the RX-8 instead meekly hints at the driver of its stress, speaking up politely to inform its driver of the things that are upsetting it if ignored, before drafting with its driver the terms and conditions of the controlled, staggered cessation of grip, effective immediately at the driver's convenience in a readily terminable contract if push comes to shove. It's such a clear communicator that it made me hyper aware for the first time, how smaller things like different wheel sizes affect a car's handling, and how awful Sports tyres are in this game, because they seem to let go so suddenly at their limit. I much prefer my RX-8 on Comfort Soft tyres, because those let go a lot slower and are more communicative. It's such a well–mannered, charismatic, and effective communicator of a sports car, the likes of which makes other supposed sports cars look like uncultured, boorish swine, and I suspect that's why I don't often like cars we test. Often, after I test a car that left a really bad taste in my mouth or even made me angry, I just want to slip into my RX-8 and just... drive. Forget. Heal, even. It's impossible to be mad when driving a working RX-8. It's almost like my automotive tea: so neutral and understated on its own, but has an amazing capability to wash away stronger flavours and reset a person's palate. In so doing, the RX-8 inadvertently becomes a standard to which other cars are compared to and judged against. That "automotive tea" of mine used to be the FD RX-7, but I think my obsessive longing for the RX-8 after work the past three weeks have told me that the RX-8 has succeeded that role for the 7 in my mind. In other words, I genuinely believe that the RX-8 drives better than the FD RX-7, and that's coming from someone who came to love cars because of the FD, and spent almost his entire life idolising and yearning for one. The RX-8 might not be nearly as photogenic as the FD, but every time after I drive my RX-8, I just sit and stare at it with a dumb, wide grin on my face and think, "daaaaamn!" While the RX-7 left the factory built to be beautiful, the RX-8 drives so damn well that it becomes beautiful to me.

Isn't that the entire point of a sports car? To amaze its driver every drive, to engage and involve them, and make them laugh and smile? Every day for the past few weeks, as I end another monotonous day at work, my body longs for, my soul yearns for the unshakable embrace of the RX-8 to wash it all away. It's impossible to be upset or mad when driving a working RX-8. I don't have any goals to achieve with it. I have nowhere to drive it to. Get that nonsensical HUD off the screen, forget the irrelevant time deltas. I just want to watch the rev needle climb and fall. I just want to hear the smooth wail of the Rotary Engine at 9,5, the wait, the anticipation, that feeling of "this ought to have blown up by now, what the hell?", never gets old. I want to be swept away in the exciting flow of its calm waters. And that, I think, is a sure sign that the car has become more than the sum of its parts, becoming an art form I can't explain or rationalise. Mazda have taken something that ought to be a subjective notion—driving pleasure—and not only perfected it into a science, but distilled it into artistic performance. There is nothing in it I want to change, nor anything beyond it that really matters. I just want to drive it hard, as it is. And that, quite simply, makes it belong in an elite list of cars that one hand would be plenty to count with. I can't even begin to imagine what having a real one must be like, highs and lows alike. I was even on the fence on buying GT7 on the leadup to launch, with the RX-8 Spirit R being one of the three things that would make me instantly buy the game and a PS5 at the then inflated prices. And you know what, it was worth every penny and more.

The RX-8 makes no sense on paper. There is nothing here that appeals to the logical side of the human brain. I can't recommend it for its practicality. Its fuel economy is woeful. Horror stories of the car's reliability probably killed the car more than emission standards. I can't even recommend it in the game, where it will never break; it's roughly the same PP level as a goddamn GD Impreza STi for some stupid reason. You'll probably be wise to not buy the car, in the same way so many were wise to not have bought an FD RX-7, an NA NSX, McLaren F1, or an E30 M3. The same way a health conscious nut would avoid bubble tea. The same way a frugal person wouldn't ever pay for p*rn or music. The same way no rational person could ever find a reason to adopt a pet.

But if the RX-8 speaks to you, I think that makes you one of the luckiest people alive. When I see an RX-8, I don't see a confused, ugly car; I see a monster who had gone through hell, who almost didn't make it through to see the light of day, just trying its best to find a place to belong, and I just want to go over and give it a hug if I could. Its engineers risked their livelihoods to bring this to us, and god damn are they in a class of their own. The vast majority of the people who drive it most likely won't ever give it a proper chance to speak its weird language, and even when allowed to speak, even fewer would understand it. But the RX-8 spoke to me, loudly, clearly, convincingly, captivatingly, bewitchingly, hypnotising me each and every time. And now I feel like I can't live without it.

If Mazda engineers could make a 4–door sedan drive better than an FD RX-7, imagine what they could create if they had access to modern technology, with the creative liberty to create something like the FD RX-7, a no frills, raw sports car again, free of any constraints, political or financial. It's the reason why the RX-Vision doesn't sit well with me, and why I disagree with the direction of the Iconic SP; I want a no–nonsense, focused Rotary sports car from Mazda. I don't want them to care about having 4 doors, adopt an existing chassis, or to shoehorn a hybrid system into a sports car, because their engineers do their best work when they just go off and make what they want to. I know they have the talent and passion to make something truly exceptional before the Internal Combustion Engine becomes consigned to history. As one of the last few enthusiast–centric brands left in the market, I truly hope we get a no–compromise 2 door rotary sports car from Mazda before it's too late.