Sorry dOOd… I can’t help myself lately…..life is good.
Traffic might be a different story, but I would imagine the MX-5 revs very high on the highway - will probably cost you similar to more in fuel than the A4 depending if you drive over 120km/h.
We probably wouldn't have cared too much about the RX-8's sheik-friendly ways, except that there was another problem. The car didn't like cold mornings. We're not fans of them, either, but we don't lie down and give up when the thermometer drops. We had to call Mazda's roadside assistance no fewer than three times when the rotary failed to start in winter. Jump-starting it worked once, but twice it was hauled away to our local dealer on a flatbed. Online editor Mike Dushane, savvy about the RX-8's aversion to the cold, parked it facing downhill so he could push-start it, which came in handy once. It transpires that the Renesis 13B rotary is prone to flooding if you fire it up and then shut it down before it gets up to operating temperature. The RX-8's manual specifically states that you should warm up the engine in really cold weather-0 degree Fahrenheit or lower-and use minimal throttle for starting. Once the engine is flooded, Mazda advises flooring the gas (which shuts off the fuel pump) or using no throttle at all. That sounds fine in theory, but in practice, our car just didn't respond to those wiles. One really cold afternoon, the car stalled when the traction control cut in while we were reversing out of a snowy driveway. We tried everything to restart the car, but it wouldn't fire up. To exacerbate the annoyance, getting to the battery terminals was a giant pain in the fingers, thanks to the aforementioned cover that must be removed for access to anything on the engine. The starting problem wasn't unique to our car, as both Mazda and Internet chat rooms acknowledge. Mazda says that, weirdly, only some cars have been affected by cold-starting woes, which the company has partially redressed by changing the spark plugs and retrofitting batteries with more cranking power.
