When Mazda used to put on their demonstrations which included an Autocross set up for the car they were pushing I drove the Mazdaspeed 6, I think it was 2007.
Not a bad handling car for its size. I remember I got into the upper 15% of time vs the pro who set the best time.
They had a static display of the entire drive train and chassis set up so you could see were everything was without the sheet metal and plastic in the way.
It just seemed way to complicated, had water hoses going to the transaxle, everything was all crammed in to everything else.
Something about it was shouting "NO!" to me and I ended up with a WRX instead.
NickD
PowerDork
4/9/19 12:18 p.m.
Clint_G said:
I think the real beauty is the front suspension - not many cars have a double wishbone up front. Second to that the awd system is totally seamless in operation. I literally haven't done anything to the rear drive except feed it a coupler every year or two. They're like a motorcycle wet clutch...they wear out kinda quickly with what we do.
NickD said:
I wish I had video of it, because it was an evil-sounding machine too. Like I said, I expected some wild Evo and then this thing goes flying past my worker station
I believe Finger Lakes was the last event where I had it completely uncorked. We put a temp fix in after we got dinged for sound on the 2nd day - that eventually failed and popped off...which led to some exhaust blowing directly at the diff controller wires. I can say for sure that the car is not as fast with only FWD, lol.
Finger Lakes Day 1
It seemed like a lot of people were having issues with sound at that event (I got warned for hitging 97db). It may have had something to do with Chris Morton setting up a pretty fast course. My favorite was a guy in a Street Mod FR-S getting warned for spiking at 105db due to bumping the rev limiter for extended periods of time and then lighting off unburned fuel like a cannon shot. He was trying to argue that he wasn't that loud as the official is looking at his steel wool baffling in his tailpipe is literally on fire
