I drove one regularly when I was living in Australia, back when the model was still newish. Wasn't mine. It belonged to a friend who bought it but, for some reason, did not like it because he got headaches everytime he drove the car for a long stint. Don't know what that was all about....maybe windscreen warped ? I had no problems with it by the way and liked it very much.
I don't think it was all that hard to maintain...most people are quite mechanical minded in Oz and you get some very competent mechanics there, so I didn't have much problems getting it serviced. As for cost of caring/running it, I would say that it is mainly a matter of perspective....which is to say "expensive" compared to what ? Rotaries seem to get a bad rep when it comes to FC. Personally, I always thought many drivers give rotaries a bad rep because of the 'heavy right foot' syndrome. Realisitically, if you are aiming to own a daily-driven sportscar, you ought to be already firmly in a position where you no longer want to be accounting for every cent because, by default, every one of these cars are more expensive to run than your venerable Proton. You buy a sportcar because you want to enjoy the driving, not because of economy. Just my 2 cents