Why you should buy this car:
You've been complaining that no one makes interestingly different cars anymore, and now you have a chance to own one. You like the idea of an engine that not only can but must spin above six grand to be entertaining or useful. You think all doors should be suicide doors. You've never thought fuel economy or stoplight drags were primary considerations in buying a car. A good healthy session of Wankelry is an important part of your day. The thought of having one of the best-handling vehicles on the road is enough to make you overlook a few considerable flaws. You're the kind of person who laughs often, for a lot of reasons, and want a car with a similar disposition.

Why you shouldn't buy this car:
You don't get jokes. Ever. You like to let others have the interesting new experiences and the headaches that come with them. You have a thing about good old stump-pulling torque, or at least briskly-away-from-a-stoplight-pulling torque. You strongly disapprove of rear-hinged automotive access apertures and call them "genocide doors." You can't get past the idea of getting 16 city mpg and a 7-second 0-to-60 time out of the same vehicle. You were brought up to believe Wankelry is immoral, filthy and should be outlawed. Handling either just isn't important to you or you live where it isn't even a factor.

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Exterior Design:***
The 2008 Mazda RX-8 shows all sorts of pleasing shapes amidst all of that strong idiosyncrasy. It's good clean fun to look at the profile of the front fenders rising slightly above the curve of the hood while you're driving. Molded-in Wankelry on the hood flows nicely into subtle twin speed bumps on roof, but then the line drops into the rear, which is just kind of there. Our test car had the optional chrome Wankelry on the front and rear air dams. Frankly, there are better ways to spend $159. From outside, the infanticide —er, "Free Style" doors are well-integrated. Overall, a rather handsome car with "grows-on-you" versus "...Damn!" styling — although we hear the Mazda killer-guppy front fascia will be somewhat improved for 2009.

Interior Design:***
The 40th Anniversary edition includes leather trim and seats in a color Mazda calls "Cosmo Red," but your parent's living room group knew it better as "Dusty Rose." It seems, unfortunately, like a compromise color. The exterior Wankelry extends to the interior in the shape of the shift knob, headrest inserts, special badges on the floor mats... Rotors, rotors, everywhere rotors as far as the eyes can see. The instrumentation is crisp, but the luminous blue LCD-lit dials (Warning! Digital speedo, Will Robinson!) contrast with the red LEDs in the center stack, giving a pleasingly patriotic affectation to the dash.

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I'm going to go ahead and hazard a marketing-based guess that the good folks at Mazda want me to think of the 2008 Mazda RX-8 40th Anniversary Edition as the culmination of their design and engineering genius. Unfortunately, the first thing going through my mind was that the suicide-doored, rotary-engined little 2+2 is one profoundly and unapologetically weird automobile. And figuring out whether the RX-8 was the refreshing and fun Mitch Hedberg/Lotus Europa/Devo kind of weird or the exhausting and tiresome Gallagher/Citröen DS/Buckethead kind of weird was not immediately apparent to me as I tried like hell to get as far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway as possible.

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