From those pics, I see a Ruf Cr3. Is that what you have?
Not ALL Ruf cars are tracked out. My old boss's speedball weighed close to 2500Lbs (as far as I recall) and was the most basic of interiors possible. But that was certainly a track car. (Though he drives it like a daily. LOL) Yeah, the Ruf cars are mega money, and I've worked for a lot of the richest guys in Los Angeles.
I'm not talking about what you CAN make a car weigh. I'm talking about what it DOES weigh from the factory. Anyone can strip a car and replace parts with after-market light weight parts... But what I'm saying is that the RX-7 will certainly leave no room for improvement if they DID meet their weight goal. (Which I still don't think they can if they follow the rules.) But it's true that a rotary motor weighs practically nothing, and that stripping the back seats from an RX-8 and shortening the chassis is going to reduce weight. I just don't think it's 200Lbs worth of weight. Hypothetically, if they're already using light weight materials as is, then they're stripping light-weight materials in the first place...
So take a step back an look at the big picture. The chassis will be a couple inches shorter, the motor will be, what, maybe 20Lbs lighter (if). And You don't have back seats. I see (with the motor weight) maybe 160-180Lbs difference. Then because the car is smaller and lighter, the safety standards change and become more strict adding more weight. Keep in mind that Mazda is already going to be taking a lot of these steps ahead of time to save money and time in the development, while also trying to get away with what every they can.
Now I don't disagree that if the car can even get down to about 3000Lbs that the RX-7 won't be a good contender, and I would LOVE to see another RX-7. I just think that 2650Lbs is a pipe-dream. I'm not trying to be argumentative... Just realistic.
__________________
2002 Corvette Z06 - Totaled
2003 Corvette Z06 50th Anniversary
|