Vibe Audio RX-8 Screams For Attention

Editor

This RX-8 in the Vibe Audio booth sure did a lot of flashing and blinking and thumping and carrying on, so it was kind of a letdown to find that all of its features were just for show. Like, those bubbling mineral-oil-filled amps? No functional purpose whatsoever. The rotating-ball sub in the trunk? Nothing but a gimmick. Nothing too impressive under the hood in terms of mods, just a lot of dress-up and neon. I guess that’s often how it is with sound-stage cars. Oh well, at least it put on a show–go below the jump to see the video.

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Posted at 5:26 pm in Audio, Jen Dunnaway, Mazda, RX-8, SEMA, SEMA 2009

Comments

bimmer528i
Jan 4, 2010 at 9:17 am

I have a video of this on YouTube. I was fortunate enough to go to SEMA this year and I have to say this RX8 is a fantastic car. In person you can really tell a lot of time and work has been put into it and it’s absolutely unique and different. I compliment the builders of this vehicle because the attention to detail is amazing.

canaryrx8
Nov 9, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Hey all, I have an account on here now, please check out my profile if you’re up for reading about this car and all of its 100% functional features. If you have any questions feel free to contact me and I’ll be more than happy to respond.
Thanks.

baggeds10brian
Nov 8, 2009 at 11:57 pm

The name is Brian, and I was one of the few friends that had little or no resources on installing the air ride system on this RX-8. I have to say that once I finished reading the comments posted on my buddies ride that I helped build, I was pretty discouraged. Not only did this car get several features from this show alone, but other handshakes regarding sponsorship came into play. Randall has been customizing his rides when most of us didn’t even have a license yet. This project was no easy task, and to be told that things are not functional is just crazy talk. How would you know the functionality of the following that was listed? I understand that it’s different, and your more then welcome to your opinions. But please don’t claim that things are not functional when you have no clue what your talking about. I have never seen an RX-8 laid out the way it is, not to mention half of the art, and pure genius that went into this enclosure. I have been to SEMA and there were plenty of things that were not my style and I didn’t like. But I did not blog it down by saying negative things especially when I don’t even know the facts. Criticism can be done with respect, as any professional critic will tell you. You will be seeing alot more of this car in the near future.

Randall Edwards
Nov 7, 2009 at 9:36 pm

Hi there, this is actually my vehicle that I’ve owned and driven for the past six years, the car has over 87000 miles, has had 3 warranty engine replacements, 2 transmissions, and I’ve competed with it over the last 3 years using Soundstream equipment prior to becoming the first car ever sponsored by Vibe here in the US.

To address a few things, those amp racks serve 2 purposes, one is cosmetics or effect, the other was cooling. Mineral oil is the same substance used in cooling gigantic electric transformers and such, so why not use it with car audio? So you call the ball a gimmick, okay then, would you have rather seen the same tired played out typical square fiberglass boxes 99.9%. Of the rest of the car audio world uses? What’s wrong with trying something different? I might also add that a ball makes for the absurd ideal enclosure as there are no corners to incorrectly bounce waves off during playback, and that ball is fully functional, and it took a stroke of genius to
engineer something like that, sorry if you don’t like it, but the sub ball and amp racks were designed with 100% functionality in mind.
I saw you mention under the hood too, I understand it is pretty basic stuff, obviously there are just 1000s of Rx8s running with air suspension components and a custom made battery setup in addition to other things. I guess you took note of my using GMC Yukon coils for my ignition too right? It’s am age old rotary trick, but whatever. So yeah I don’t have some huge turbo under the hood, why would I? So I can have some bloated dyno queen? I drive the car a lot, I don’t need a fuhzillion horsepower under the hood to feel good about myself. In closing, I can respect you don’t like it, but to say those things aren’t functional is just not true, if yu are ever in Austin Texas where me and the car live,, feel free to come on by and I will be more than happy to let you listen to it, perhaps if you’d taken the time to do so in the first place you might not have ragged what took a very small group of friends with next to no resources a lot of hours and hard work to create.

Chris Bicknell
Nov 5, 2009 at 10:20 pm

It just seems like a silly waste of money to me. Whatever floats your boat I guess, this one just doesn’t do anything for me.

TOPlamborghini
Nov 5, 2009 at 6:43 pm

The color of the car in the pictures looks ALOT diffrent then it does in the video lol