I KNOW THERE are going to be some of you out there who are up in arms about our latest choice for Future Classic. Even if it is a car which allows you the childish glee of saying the word Wankel in polite company without fear of angry reprisals, the Mazda RX-8 has hardly set the motoring world on fire, curious rotary-engined, four-door-coupé’d anomaly that it is. So why has your favourite website gone doolally over the thing?

    Well, it quite simply comes down the ‘R3’ bit of this particular model’s title. In 2008, the year of the Credit Economic Downturn Catastrophe Media-Panic Financial Crisis Banking Mayhem Crunch, Mazda set about giving the ageing RX-8 one last shot in the arm. Gone was the weedy 189bhp Low Power version that had sat on the books since the RX-8 went into production in 2003, to be replaced by a harder, better, faster, stronger version of the High Power model. The same Renesis Wankel rotary engine remained – i.e. 1308cc, 228bhp at 8200rpm and mammoth torque of, er… 156lb ft at 5500rpm – but it was the host of little detail changes made to the previously underwhelming High Power car which turned the R3 into an overlooked gem.

    You see, Mazda took the slightly effeminate but great selling coupé and gave it the most minimal raft of tweaks. The car was facelifted front and back and fitted with a tasteful body kit to give it more aggression, the wheels went up to handsome 19-inchers, while that practical yet attractive body was beefed up for better torsional rigidity, incorporating a front strut-brace for good measure. The suspension was made stiffer with revised settings and a set of Bilstein dampers, the final drive went from 4.444:1 to 4.777:1 to improve acceleration, while the oil-consuming rotary was given more capacity for the black stuff, more cooling from the gaping front bumper apertures and easier access to the dipstick, to make checking the ever-diminishing oil level easier.

    All of this is hardly re-engineering on a scale that would shame the Millau Viaduct, but – if I may be allowed to drop a cliché bombshell here – the sum of those parts made for a far greater whole. I’d driven many a pre-R3 228bhp RX-8 and been hugely unimpressed. Yes, it was smooth, novel, weirdly practical and, as always, the rotary was in its way a marvel, but it never felt even remotely quick and overall it came across as a bit limp. So when this R3 arrived, I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with it.