Mazda taking aim at Germans with straight-six Skyactiv-X and -D

GoFaster

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Jun 16, 1999
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Brampton, Ontario, Canada
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2006 Jetta TDI
That's a pretty interesting design choice. Surely this is for marketing reasons; Mazda has already built V6 engines but an inline 6 packaged longitudinally in a rear-drive-biased chassis would set them apart from Toyota, Honda, etc. Appears that the recent Mazda V6 engine is still based on a Ford design, which presumably Mazda wants to get away from.

FWIW Ford CD6 (a.k.a. next Ford Explorer, just starting production now) is longitudinal rear-drive ... but Ford doesn't have a current-production inline 6 to put in it.
 
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