Backstory

I suppose this is where we begin. Funny enough this shot is actually when I thought I was at the end. The end of a long journey building my perfect RX8. Somehow nearly ten years have gone by since I purchased this car and piece by piece I’ve been bolting on parts in the name of speed.

When I originally purchased my RX8 my performance driving experience consisted of a single downhill off-camber hill at over the posted speed limit which swiftly resulted in my car being upside down in a ditch. I quickly learned that my illustrious life-long (16 years) appreciation of speed and fast cars from reading Road and Track magazine and watching Top Gear meant nothing when it comes driving a car quickly in reality.

To my naive teenaged-self there was no other explanation other than the laws of physics had been unfairly enforced upon my second generation Ford Probe. My low-rent all season tires and complete lack of skill had nothing to do with it. If I could relive that day knowing what I know now I could have navigated that corner with one hand, carrying on a conversation with my passenger, in a safer manner and at a much higher speed. This would have saved me years of dreadful insurance rates and my parents a few gray hairs.

After spending many years with my tail between my legs driving whatever was cheap or handed down to me I finally decided to pursue my childhood dream of owning a proper sports car. The Mazda RX8 was released while I was in college and it was every hope of mine that by the time of graduation the downward slope of depreciation would intersect at just the right point with the upward slope of my income so I could make my dream a reality.

We all know the depreciation side of the equation wasn’t a problem so needless to say after a year of being gainfully employed I picked up my very own 2004 GT equipped with the necessary six speed manual transmission. I’m not sure what originally enamored me with the RX8. I wasn’t particularly a rotary guy and there were plenty of entry-level sports cars for sale at the time. There was just something about the focused engineering and beautifully proportioned lines that drew me in and has kept me appreciating this car over it’s period rivals for over a decade.

It didn’t take me long to get the itch to drive fast. Knowing full well how capable I was at inverting cars and putting their shiny side down I decided to take a different approach and join a local autocross club. Autocross is a great way of learning how to drive fast in a safe environment. Once you start to understand what your car is capable of it completely opens your eyes to what going fast actually means. Most clubs have instructors standing by who are not only willing but actually excited about sharing their knowledge and experience with you. If you’re on the fence, my advice is to just do it. I’ve yet to join a performance driving club of any kind that hasn’t been extremely welcoming and encouraging to people with all sort of different cars or ability levels.

This newly acquired understanding of speed quickly resulted in my graduation from autocross to the race track. While autocross is a great way to learn to drive a car, there is only so much fun (in my opinion) that you can have at relatively slow speeds for less than 60 seconds at a time. Driving on a road course extends your learning curve of performance driving and allows you to push your car and skills to the next level.

I spent the next five years tapering off my autocross events and going to more and more track days. Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington was where I first experienced the track and a cross country move to Oklahoma resulted in Hallett Motor Racing Circuit being my home track. It was at Hallett that I was able to really hone my skills. It is a fantastic track with a great family-like community that offered numerous track days throughout the year at a very reasonable cost.

At nearly all the track events I attended at Pacific Raceways timing was not allowed. They were simply events to learn to drive quickly in a relatively safe manner. This was not the case at Hallett. Timing was not only allowed but it was encouraged. No longer did I have to gauge my ability on how a lap felt, I could produce empirical evidence of how my abilities were progressing.  What this also did was create an insatiable desire to modify my car to extract as much speed as possible from it.

This resulted in cycling through a number of different brake, suspension, wheel and tire setups, each having their own advantages and short-comings. I tried my best to keep a level head and only upgrade/change components as they were needed. Sometimes the need was due to wear and tear but a lot of the time it was a necessity because my ability was catching up and exceeding the car’s capability. Tires would get stickier and stickier which would require bigger and more aggressive brakes which would require stiffer suspension to deal with the added pitch and roll braking and turning would produce. Eventually the culmination of these things created g-forces that encouraged the need of high-bolstered seats to keep my from getting thrown around and it seemed like more and more things were being removed from the car in the name of weight savings.

The car continued to morph and change but I never wanted it to be a race car. When I bought the RX8 it was a nice car and it was my intent to keep it that way. Sure there is a price to pay when you’re constantly pushing a car to it’s limits — battle wounds and scars are just the name of the game. My RX8 has gone on it’s fair share of off road excursions, brushed a few tire walls and had it’s share of mechanical failures but it lives on. And in the spirit of living on, after two blown Renesis engines it was time for a heart transplant. As the name implies my RX8 ends up being powered by a Honda k-series. Blasphemy to many but to me step one in RX8 version 2.0.