As hard as it is to find a decent manual transmission car around here, I somehow stumbled upon a decently priced 04 Rx8.

I'm driving the family bus right now so anything is better, but from all the research I've done, these things have tons of problems. Though I do hear the opposite, that it runs great, as long as you take care of it.

My main concerns are these
1. I live in Vegas, it gets hot here. I've heard triple digit temps mess the engine up and stall them.
2. No stop and go. When you drive you have to go a pretty fair distance. Is there validity to that?
3. Nobody has them, so nobody can fix them.
4. Exactly how to avoid the flooding issue

This one was owned before, has nearly 100000 miles on it, but looks good, 6 speed manual, the previous owner added a rear spoiler and butterfly doors, but that seems to be it.

Just wanted some opinions here, keep looking or jump on this before its gone?

 

After crawling through the forums I think I can handle most of this. I have yet to find anything on the triple digit temperature stalls though. If anyone knows about this please let me know.

 

If you start 1 up DO NOT turn it off until it has warmed up, otherwise it will flood and you wont get it restarted. We usally get at least 1 flooded RX8 towed in each week, worst week was 3.

 

Is that the biggest problem though? I hear so many stories and I just wonder if people flood them too often and that's why they break.

 

What stories?
They do use alot of petrol.
They inject engine oil to lube the seals, so you need to regularly check & top up the oil.
Only use genuine Mazda oil, don't use synthetic

 

Just horror stories of the engine getting destroyed. I figure most of that comes from pure neglect of it though.

 

Im yet to see a RX8 come in with a destroyed engine, only some with high km's and low compression.

 

yeah the RX-8 is a reliable car but only when well taken car of. It does need more special type of attention than most and it's pricey but without it the car is more vulnerable.