It's true Ray - there are 10's of thousands of street rods out there running 'mustang II' based front suspensions.
JOUT - the RX8 has a MUCH stiffer unibody than a stock fox body; it would cope with V8 torque without near as much flex as the stock Stang exhibits. More a function of how much better the industry has gotten in the last 10 years at producing stiffer unibodies than any deficiency with the Stang - it's just an older design. The SN94/95's are much better than the Fox bodies in that regard.
True, design has gotten better stronger/lighter - but I don't see an RX8 taking well to 300 lbs-ft. in stock chassis form. Ah well, we will never know for sure - or will we???? I imagine a lighter motor TT application would do all right, but the physics of more wieght from a v8 couldn't work that well in the RX8.
The nice thing about the 1.3 liter is you can pull it out by yourself and carry the whole motor to the bench to work on. There are only a little over a dozen parts to it. The balance and overall weight of the rx-8 is supurb. Whatever torque the engine lacks can be made up in gearing which Mazda did a decent job of. In 2006 or 2007 the rx-7 is suppose to be coming back probably on a similar platform. A rear wheel drive car with the weight of a civic with 280+ hp is a pretty damn good contender. But we will see...
Kevin
jaketuff - "True, design has gotten better stronger/lighter"
While better, stronger is true, lighter isn't. True - unibody cars can be equally stiff, or stiffer than their full frame counter parts and be lighter. But over the years the main reason the unibody cars have gotten stronger is because they've gotten heavier. The new Stang is gonna top 3600 lbs. easily. The Porsche's and Corvettes are pushing 3300 lbs, as is Subaru's 'compact' WRX STI. The Rx8 is relatively small to be pushing into the low 3000 lb range. The extra structure is necessary for the stiffness needed to overcome tougher noise, vibration and harshness criteria that all manufacturers build to these days. And because of that, the Rx8 would cope with the same amount of torque with MUCH less flex than a Fox body - one of the original flexi-flyers.
My friend just thinks its faster overall, I don't think hes too smart however... the 5.0L weighs roughly the same as a RX-8, has more torque stock, less horsepower obviously..
I wouldn't doubt 1/4 mile times would be faster, I believe he just thinks the ability to rev to 9000 rpm is actuall a good thing.. lol imagine dropping the clutch at 7k rpm.. say bye bye to clutch.
Excerpts from Car&Driver's latest test of the car - which was a comparison between the Cobra (yes, 390HP version), the Infinity G35 Coupe (big brother of the Z car) and Rx8. The Rx8 won the test - the Cobra came third. No doubt the Cobra was much quicker, but subjectively, they preferred the Rx8 over the other 2 cars. As you can see, the Rx8 is capable of accelerating as quickly as a stock 5.0L fox body; handling, stopping, top speed - not even close - the Rx8 gets the nod.
"Not only does the RX-8 turn into corners with a fluid linearity, but it also continues to respond accurately even as the cornering forces build at higher speeds. The car is so securely planted that you feel confident leaning on its tires as you corner ever harder. In the RX-8, that means leaning on its rear tires because the suspension has a very neutral balance.
Achieving this communication and responsiveness at low limits is not so hard, but the RX-8 does it at 0.91 g, a considerable margin beyond the cornering capabilities of these two competitors. Its transient handling is similarly superior. And the RX-8 is the best stopper of this bunch. Despite these handling advantages, the RX-8 was the slowest on the racetrack, and that's because of a shortage of midrange grunt in its rotary engine. Peak power is decent at 250 horsepower, but it's developed at 8500 rpm. Torque, however, is a mere 159 pound-feet—down 111 and 231 pound-feet on the two other cars—and it comes at 5500 rpm, which is nearly as high as the others' power peaks. Think Honda S2000 power band, and you get the idea.
To get the most out of this car, you must be willing to use its 9000-rpm redline and maybe even the 500 additional rpm to the engine's rev limiter. As usual with rotaries, that's no hardship. The engine gains rpm so smoothly and freely that a tone sounds at 8500 rpm to warn you that the redline is approaching.
With the help of an 8000-rpm clutch drop and the engine buzzing like a flock of angry hornets, the RX-8 scooted to 60 mph in 5.9 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 14.5 seconds at 96 mph."