End Of An Era

So in the absence of an announcement of any release date for the RX Vision, I’ve sold the R3: part-exchanging it for a new Abarth 124 Spider which has now arrived at my dealer.

I’m keeping the personalised registration, so it’s getting transferred over and in the meantime, the RX-8 has been assigned a new registration number and the plates went on today.

img_8964 img_8965

Bin There, Done That

So yesterday evening, I went to our company car park to collect my car to discover one of the large bins up against the side of my car and a nice dent on the wheel arch.

Yes, Southwark Council’s waste management operatives had managed to dent my car by wheeling one of their bins into the side of it. Great! So I’m logging a complaint with them now.

Luckily for them it hit mine and not a colleague’s Bentley…

MoT

Yes, my RX-8 R3 is coming up to three years old (in a couple of weeks), so last week I took it to Docklands Mazda for them to carry out an MoT test … which it passed with flying colours, even producing 0% carbon monoxide emissions on fast idle and 0.04% carbon monoxide emissions at the natural idle speed.

Mileage? 55,447 miles from new and still going like it should. Plus it still looks great.

So yes, I’m pleased as I tend to hang on to my cars for a few years and there’s frankly nothing I’d want to replace it with at present, especially as Mazda stopped producing them.

I’ve also renewed my tax and insurance for another year, plus I’ll probably extend the Mazda warranty for another year, just in case ;)

Mazda Johnny Herbert Video

As these sorts of things vanish from manufacturers’ websites and YouTube from time to time, I thought I’d convert and upload the official Johnny Herbert road/track test video:

Get the Flash Player to see this video.


Andrew Appleton Photoshoot

Yesterday, Janey and I went out to do a photoshoot featuring the two RX-8s with a great local photographer, Andrew Appleton.

Most of the shots – from three different themes – are being processed now, but in the meantime, here’s me in a casual pose with my R3:

"Top Gear" Theme

iPod Integration

Well Nunns have sorted things out: they arranged for me to bring the batmobile in today to fit a new relay for the rear foglight – it switches to the trailer when the towbar electrics are connected and back to the car’s when it’s disconnected – and a different iPod integration module following Nunns’ discussions wit Mazda Europe.

And lo and behold, it works with my old iPod as well as my new “RexPod”, displaying track number (from the playlist) or artist or track names.

Result!