Mazda Hit with RX-8 Engine Defect Class Action Lawsuit

A California woman alleges that a sports car continuously succumbs to design issues according to a recently filed Mazda RX-8 engine defect class action lawsuit.

Rotary engines like those used in the Mazda RX-8 are exceedingly rare in modern cars. From the 2004-2008 model years, it was the only passenger car in the U.S. market that used one.

In a standard internal combustion engine, a bank of cylinders takes advantages of pistons to produce the intake, compression, combustion and exhaust portions of the cycle. In comparison, the rotary engine uses a rotor in a roughly triangular shape that rotates to create the areas necessary for that same four-step process, requiring special care in designing it due to the unique requirements and issues regarding sealing.

However, according to Christina Paschal’s class action lawsuit lawyers, due to the Mazda RX-8 engine defect, issues regarding the spark plugs can lead to fuel flooding the engine, rendering it inoperable. And according to the complaint, the auto maker was aware of the issue in 2004, soon after the sports car was first launched, per a service bulletin that the company issued.

In the woman’s case, she bought the 2004 Mazda RX-8 and suffered an engine failure in July of 2009, and the company performed repairs that included replacing the spark plugs to address the issue. However, the issue arose again one year later and the auto maker reportedly failed to pay for all repair costs even though it had issued an eight-year warranty extension in May 2008, reportedly as a result of the Mazda RX-8 engine defect.

Although the company issued the warranty extension, it did not warn consumers of the engine issues in a public fashion, but rather notified the service departments at its various dealerships both in 2004 and 2008. These actions are allegedly a violation of California’s Secret Warranty Law. The class action lawsuit complaint alleges that the term encompasses any situation where an auto maker will decide to pay for certain repairs without notifying the people who own the affected vehicles.

Even if Mazda did always perform the necessary repairs in some vehicles, the class action lawsuit alleges that the company did not do so for all class vehicles. Rather, in nearly 40 percent of the transactions analyzed by Paschal’s class action lawsuit lawyers, dealerships did not pay for spark plugs that would have ameliorated the fuel flooding caused by the issue. Even then, the value of the vehicles has decreased, the lawsuit claims, because Mazda has not engineered a permanent fix to the Mazda RX-8 engine defect.

The plaintiffs are represented by class action lawsuit lawyers Stephen M. Harris of Knapp Petersen & Clark and Robert L. Starr

The Mazda RX-8 Engine Defect Class Action Lawsuit is Christina Paschal v. Mazda Motor of America Inc., Case No. 14-cv-00594, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.