Mazda plans special edition sendoff for RX-8 rotary sports car

According to KHABARKHODRO, Mazda Motor Corp. may have retired the RX-8 sports car in the United States, but the Japanese carmaker is sending off the rotary engine car with a special edition model to mark the last 1,000 slated for production before output ceases for good next year.

The Mazda RX-8 Spirit R tribute version will go on sale in Japan next month. The car will get exclusive Spirit R badging, headlights, fog lights and rear combination lights, in addition to red front and rear brake calipers and special transmission tunnel trim, Mazda said in a statement.

Leather interior detailing will come standard, as will curtain and side airbags.

The manual transmission version will get special bucket seats from Recaro, while both the automatic and stick shift variants get colored alloy wheels.

Mazda discontinued the rotary-engined RX-8 for Europe in June 2010 and for North America in May of this year. It is still producing the car for Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. That production ends next June, spokeswoman Michiko Terashima said.

Mazda plans to sell the Spirit R edition only in Japan for now.

Though Mazda has not announced plans for a successor model using the brand’s trademark rotary engine, CEO Takashi Yamanouchi pledged in the statement that development of the engine would continue even after the last special edition RX-8 leaves the factory.

Mazda declined to say how many RX-8s it plans to sell globally before the nameplate dies next June. But in Japan, it aims to sell 1,000 special edition versions and about 150 normal production versions by then. Mazda gave a similar sayonara to the RX-7 with a Spirit R special edition, when that car was killed in 2002 to make way for the RX-8