Ready for blastoff
I finish work one evening, and I decide to stop by one of my buddies' to show off this little buzz bomb. He previously owned a Mazda 3 Sport, but lack of space for the family convinced him to swap it for a Tribute.
I get to his place and we go out for a short drive. After a few minutes, my buddy says something to me that stayed within the outer limits of my pea brain: "Do you realize that if we had cars this powerful when we were young, we might not be here today?"
This isn't unrealistic. When I was 16, my first car made do with a battalion of--watch out--82 horsepower, and I still could manage to terrorize pedestrians from time to time. My forth car, at 19 years old, had a 135-hp engine. Even today, my personal car has only 180 horsepower, and that's more than enough.
The musclecar recipe
In the Sixties, domestic manufacturers created performance cars by dropping big engines in small cars. The same idea is more or less recreated here. 263 horsepower in a little Mazda3 hatch, but especially 280 lb-ft of torque thanks to its turbocharged 2.3-liter engine, translates into 0-100 km/h blasts of 5.8 seconds.
The car can hit somewhere near 250 km/h, a good reason to avoid leaving the keys in the hands of inexperienced drivers. And that top speed is electronically limited, so it could theoretically go even faster...
The same engine is found in the defunct MAZDASPEED6 as well as in the CX-7 crossover. But in the MAZDASPEED3's case, this power is channeled only through the front wheels, the ones that also have to steer the car.
Upgraded mechanicals
Okay, Mazda's engineers know as well as we that this car would become uncontrollable, so they concocted an electronic system that manages the engine's torque. This gizmo works especially in first through third gears, and reduces torque when the steering wheel is turned from a certain degree. There is also a limited-slip differential on board.
Torque steer is minimized, but alas, we can still feel the front wheels waltz during hard acceleration, and we must hold the steering wheel firmly while powering through street corners. If only the little MAZDASPEED3 had the MSP6's all-wheel drive hardware, the problem wouldn't even exist. But if it were the case, the price of the car would be too steep.
I finish work one evening, and I decide to stop by one of my buddies' to show off this little buzz bomb. He previously owned a Mazda 3 Sport, but lack of space for the family convinced him to swap it for a Tribute.
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| The differences between the Speed and the "ordinary" 3 Sport are not that obvious. |
I get to his place and we go out for a short drive. After a few minutes, my buddy says something to me that stayed within the outer limits of my pea brain: "Do you realize that if we had cars this powerful when we were young, we might not be here today?"
This isn't unrealistic. When I was 16, my first car made do with a battalion of--watch out--82 horsepower, and I still could manage to terrorize pedestrians from time to time. My forth car, at 19 years old, had a 135-hp engine. Even today, my personal car has only 180 horsepower, and that's more than enough.
The musclecar recipe
In the Sixties, domestic manufacturers created performance cars by dropping big engines in small cars. The same idea is more or less recreated here. 263 horsepower in a little Mazda3 hatch, but especially 280 lb-ft of torque thanks to its turbocharged 2.3-liter engine, translates into 0-100 km/h blasts of 5.8 seconds.
The car can hit somewhere near 250 km/h, a good reason to avoid leaving the keys in the hands of inexperienced drivers. And that top speed is electronically limited, so it could theoretically go even faster...
The same engine is found in the defunct MAZDASPEED6 as well as in the CX-7 crossover. But in the MAZDASPEED3's case, this power is channeled only through the front wheels, the ones that also have to steer the car.
 |
| The 6-speed gearbox works flawlessly. |
Okay, Mazda's engineers know as well as we that this car would become uncontrollable, so they concocted an electronic system that manages the engine's torque. This gizmo works especially in first through third gears, and reduces torque when the steering wheel is turned from a certain degree. There is also a limited-slip differential on board.
Torque steer is minimized, but alas, we can still feel the front wheels waltz during hard acceleration, and we must hold the steering wheel firmly while powering through street corners. If only the little MAZDASPEED3 had the MSP6's all-wheel drive hardware, the problem wouldn't even exist. But if it were the case, the price of the car would be too steep.