The Boss’s Ride Mazda RX-8

What do you drive when you are the top honcho of an automobile company? The top-of-the-line model, that’s what. It is expected of the president or the chief executive officer of a car company to drive, or ride in when he’s chauffeured around, his brand’s premium model to promote his company’s image. You don’t expect the president of BMW riding around in a Range Rover, do you? Although BMW owns the Range Rover brand, it’s simply unthinkable.

In the same manner, you don’t expect the Managing Director of Mazda Group Philippines to drive around in a Ford Expedition. But that’s what happened to David Macasadia, Dave to his American counterparts or simply "Mr. Mac" to his friends in the media. He was the Vice President for Marketing of Ford Philippines, happily tooling around in his American SUV, when he was drafted to lead the return of the Mazda name plate into the local motoring scene, Mazda being a part of the Ford worldwide car family. Ensuring the market acceptance and brand recognition of Mazda was high on Mr. Mac’s priority and with two models aimed directly at enthusiasts, the 2.0-liter DOHC 4-cylinder Mazda6 sports sedan and the 3.0-liter V6-powered Mazda Tribute sports utility, the company’s "Zoom-zoom" theme is definitely on target.

But driving a full-size Ford SUV didn’t jive with the Mazda image for their chief officer, so the company decreed it had to go. In its place went the company’s flagship model, its sexy and innovative sports car, the Mazda RX-8. Mr. Mac, who was accustomed to the hulking and ahem, authoritative presence of the Expedition on the road, had to acclimate himself with the svelte and sporty dimensions of his new ride, as well as the envious looks he gets when he drives along Any Street, Metro Manila.

The Mazda RX-8 challenges the definition of what a sports car should be. A progeny of the RX-Evolv and RX-01 show cars, the Hiroshima-built RX-8 isn’t meant to be a direct replacement for the RX-7, the late, great rotary-powered sports car, yet it ably fills up the void left by its predecessor. Unlike the 2-seater RX-7, the RX-8 can accommodate four people, with ingenious doors to admit those people. The front doors open as normal doors do, but the rear doors are hinged at the back, suicide-door style, and the resulting opening is large enough for an elephant to rampage through, hypothetically speaking. Of course, the said hypothetical elephant had to get through the supportive and comfortable front seats, but I’ll doubt he would want to continue his rampage after he gets a glimpse of the modern yet ergonomic interior.

A thick and sporty three-spoke steering wheel faces the driver and behind it is a red-lit instrument cluster composed of three circular zones with the tachometer and digital speedometer mounted prominently in the middle. Mr. Mac’s car is equipped with a 4-speed automatic, with sequential shifts summoned through paddles on the small diameter steering wheel. The paddles are mimicked by other controls, meaning they’re within reach, modern and highly responsive.

The controls bode well with the power provided by a new version of the Wankel engine called the Renesis, whose horsepower out put approaches that of the RX-7’s, yet without the old model’s twin turbochargers, higher emissions and thirst for fuel. With a 6-speed manual, the RX-8’s two-rotor engine produces 250bhp, 159lb-ft of torque at 5,500rpm and screams up to its 9,000rpm redline. On the automatic, some concessions were made for the rev limitations of the torque converter, restricting engine speed to 7,500rpm and limiting the power to 210bhp. But Mazda engineers gave the automatic better torque at lower engine speeds (164lb-ft at 5,000 rpm) to give a sporty character to the shiftless version, assuring that you go "zoom-zoom" even in a slush box. Other concessions gravitate towards improving the ride like reducing wheel/tire packages from 18-inches to 16-inches for a more compliant suspension system.

So how does the Mazda RX-8 drive? If you’re a hard-core sports car enthusiast, you better go for the 6-speed manual as the automatic version we tested might not really impress you. For starters, the automatic transmission is programmed for self-preservation. It does rev up to 7,500 when you manually hold it with the paddles but it will shift up the next gear automatically when you approach the engine’s threshold. If you have driven the RX-7 and its 10,000rpm rotary, you’ll definitely miss the banzai runs with the shiftless RX-8.

Another thing you may miss is the razor sharp suspension of the old RX-series. The RX-8 is attuned to a more luxurious ride and handling was compromised a bit to achieve this. The RX-8 automatic is still a capable-handling rear-drive sports car, but for pure adrenalin-pumping corners, the 6-speed RX-8 with its 225/45-18 tires is the better corner carver’s choice. The weight distribution of the car is ideal, whether manual or auto, because of the rotary engine’s light weight. Performance-wise, the RX-8 can still be called a sports car, albeit with room for four, as it can one-up most sport sedans that can also seat four.

As for Mr. Mac, he’s happy with the looks he gets from driving the car. He says he’s past high-speed driving and corner carving, so the RX-8 Automatic’s civilized and genteel performance is more to his liking. He adds that his son, who borrows the car for the occasional date, drives it more for the looks than for the power. "Plus a hundred pogi-points agad," jokes the inimitable Mr. Mac.

Unfortunately for those local sports car enthusiasts who’d like to get their hands on one, the RX-8 is not available locally, as of the moment. (You can write Mazda, though. Hint, hint.) This particular model was brought in for the launch party of the Mazda brand and is the only officially-imported RX-8 in the country to date. Mr. Mac said he found it particularly fortunate that company decided to keep it to gauge the market’s reaction to the sports car, and more so when the company decided to assign it to the Mazda chief, whoever would get the position. Of course, he was elated when he got the job and the car. Talk about lucky. But then again, that’s Mr. Mac.