Buying a used car is a minefield. First you need to weigh what you want, then you need to calculate how much it will cost you so that the nice grandmother who has only done three miles in ten years in her Toyota does not fool you. Once you have that figured out, you will have concerns whether the kind old lady has actually stolen the car and the police will get it back within minutes of your cash being disposed of. Then there’s the question of whether the engine will erupt in a mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke a week later or whether the floor has been welded to the chassis of another car and is discarded.
Of course, there are advantages to buying a used car, most notably the £ £ £ you’ll save thanks to the original owner essentially dumping a few thousand pounds down the drain in depreciation as they drove away from the showroom for the first time. . . This is the situation I hope to find myself in very soon. Yes, the time has come to part with my beloved Hyundai Coupe and I think that after many months of deliberation I have decided on my new muse.
Now those of you who regularly read my articles will be sitting smugly knowing what I have fallen in love with. Obviously, it will be the car I refer to all the time for having the best value, the best performance, the best style, and the best driving package – the Honda Civic Type R. In fact, you may have previously stated: “I’ll buy. a Honda The following “Civic Type R” is not too cryptic. So the fact that I am going to buy something else will probably come as a surprise and cement my reputation for being unreliable. My apologies.
Having driven a coupe for the past four years, I have quite enjoyed being a paradox to the usual demographic of coupe drivers: a hairdresser or a man going through a midlife crisis. So I have decided to continue down the coupe route and, having exhausted the now extensive list of available options, I opted for a Mazda RX8. The best thing about this is the fact that I can write about the Wankel engine and not get in trouble.
Stop laughing because despite the embarrassing name, the Wankel engine, or more commonly called a “rotary” engine, is as impressive an engineering achievement as the pyramids. Well, that or a Corby trouser press. I doubt you’re reading this explanation through your laugh, but simply put, the engine works by turning a triangular piston in a vaguely circular cylinder. The result is the smoothest engine available and one that can rev up to 9000 rpm. So even though the engine is 1.3 liters in ‘normal’ terms it naturally produces 231bhp and as you shoot past 7000rpm you will run into a scene similar to when you jump into hyperspace in Star Trek.
Unlike most available coupes, the RX8 is rear-wheel drive, so it’s perfectly balanced and handles flawlessly. So while the front wheels steer and the rear wheels steer, you have time to put your right foot on and watch everything blur again, or admire the interior. The car he was driving was so covered in leather that I thought I had taken the wrong way and ended up in Soho. In fact, the car hides the fact that it is from Japan, a car-making nation renowned for its reliability and speed, but not for style. Not so with the RX8, both internally and externally, the car is incredibly beautiful.
It’s a bit like trying to explain a Monet painting without standing in front of it, but trust me, it’s amazing. The taillight clusters are clear Lexus IS200 style, the hood bulges out like the engine is trying to escape and I haven’t gotten to the best of it yet. Coupes typically have the most inaccessible rear seats known to man. The RX8 has hidden rear doors that open with reverse hinges that alleviate this problem without marring the side profile of the vehicle.
This is not to say that the car is as practical as a hatchback because it still has the characteristics of a coupe from a small trunk and a front bumper so low that it will scrape snow in the winter and small animals in the forest in the summer. Despite this and despite the horrendous gas bills I will be faced with (25 mpg !!!), the Mazda RX8 is the used car for me. The four-year-old versions are now under the £ 10,000 mark and so you get one of the best cars of the new millennium.
Getting gas won’t be a problem either – I’m looking forward to my baked bean diet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.