A lot of magazine writers are bad mouthing the RX8 if not out and out
slandering it. These jerks must not know how to drive a six speed. We filled
up in El-Centro, ran three or four max acceleration runs to
90 or 100 MPH at Agua Caliente airport and then drove home to West LA on one
tank
of gas. That roughly works out to about 20 MPG. Part of the time we
were just keeping up with traffic on I-15 at 90 MPH cruise. Sorry Ernesto.
We had several max effort high speed passes on two lane roads between Agua
Caliente and
Temecula. The rest of  the time 70 or 80 MPH was typical. We had to climb
from sea level up to about 4000 feet and back down to sea level.
Also we drove from west San Diego up over a 4200 foot pass and down
to sea level again in El Centro right around 100 miles on 4 gallons
or right around 25 MPG.

It is real easy to forget you are in fourth or fifth instead of sixth
gear in the RX8 as the engine is so smooth and quiet. If you do that
the engine goes into a low intake manifold pressure, high RPM mode that
results in operating the engine in a high BSFC part of the fuel consumption
map. See a typical BSFC  map below.

If you drive it around at 5000 to 6000 RPM... yes you will burn lots of extra
fuel.


Paul Lamar

Paul what speed is the car going at 4300 rpm in top gear? That rpm is about
50% of 8500

Congratulations on the safe filming.

Doug in Japan.

Lets see 4000 is about 80 so 4300 is about 86 MPH. Of course that still says
nothing about the HP being generated. You still need to know the manifold
pressure. I know you know that but there are people on here that may not
be aware of that fact.

BTW did you get the video clip? I think your mail box was full for awhile.

Paul Lamar
 
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