Mazda SkyActiv Inline-6?!

In reply to JBasham :

I've become slightly infatuated with the styling of the new Mazda 3 hatch. As such I've been watching all the reviews on the new 3. Unfortunately more than once I've heard that it has zero steering feel. It's possible with Mazdas new desire to become a more premium brand that they'll begin to pull away from worrying about things like steering feel and worry more about materials and quietness. They've said that a new Mazdaspeed 3 is not going to happen because it doesn't align with the direction they want to take the company.

I like the fact that Mazda;s design language is moving towards simple and clean. In a way, that's more balsy than throwing a lego-set worth of styling cues out there like some do.

Then right in between was the Maxima sedan, a Goldilocks car.

The Maxima was a good car on an exciting trajectory right up until it was sacrificed on the altar of the Infiniti G.  

What was good about the Atlas that would make it worth resurrecting? The whole family of engines seemed rather uninspiring.

To me it (the original 4.2) seemed like an engine that overdelivered in a vehicle that couldn't turn the horsepower into fun. It was a rare thing for a truck engine, one that kept gaining power until it peaked AFTER 6000 rpm! It's an engine you could drive without realizing it's powerful because unless you actually get to the top half of the rev range you'd never know there was anything up there. Apparently fiddling with the torque managements in hptuners helps that feeling of listlessness in the lower rpms. I keep going back to thinking to swap one into an 88 Chevy Pickup i've been sitting on. Have to commit to aluminum welding or buying an expensive aftermarket pan that probably only 2 dozen of exist or a fair bit of frame mods. Obviously not insurmountable, given that a very young person swapped one into a studebaker with a turbo as documented here on GRM.