Mazda RX-8

The RX-8 was Mazda betting the rotary's future on nuance instead of boost. The RENESIS 13B-MSP moved its exhaust ports to the side plates, revved to 9,000rpm naturally aspirated, and won International Engine of the Year for 2003. Around it Mazda built the strangest brilliant sports car of the 2000s: freestyle rear doors, genuine 50:50 balance, and steering that made a Cayman feel remote. It weighed nothing where it mattered and carried four adults where no coupe could.

The ownership folklore is half the identity: compression tests before purchase, the cold-start flooding ritual, ignition coils on a schedule, and eternal premix arguments. RENESIS engines die young under neglectful owners and last surprisingly well under attentive ones — a reputation that cratered values and made the SE3P the cheapest entry into rotary ownership there has ever been. Grassroots endurance grids are still full of them for exactly that reason.

The market is finally sorting the herd. Spirit R and the Rotary Engine 40th Anniversary cars lead, clean low-mile Series 2 examples follow, and everything else is a $6,000 dare with a compression number attached. As the last production rotary sports car — and almost certainly the last naturally aspirated one ever — the SE3P's blue-chip turn feels less like an if than a when.