It's not THAT old - it first made it into a car in 2013 (Mazda 6 and CX-5). At the time it was the most efficient four pot around but it's slipped now - 28mpg combined versus 30mpg for a 1.5T CR-V or non-hybrid RAV4.

It's a more refined motor than the Toyota 2.5 but not as nice as a K24. My parents have a first gen CX-5 and the drivetrain falls into "it's fine for what it is". The auto shifts better (smarter and smoother) than the 10 speed in my RDX.

I have the turbo 2.5, the fucking thing is a gas hog.

So now same engine, but no turbo? Meh.

I like the styling though, the Soul Red is so nice in certain lighting, I never get tired of looking at it.

Dead. It was seen as too boy ricer, not refined enough.

this gonna sell well cause it appeals to more general consumers with the large ipad screen.

exterior styling is nice but it's such a wannabe lexus copycat, taillights look like a NX or even a baby LX, even the side profile looks like a baby LX, the mazda lettering again copying lexus,

The previous gen looked so classy, timeless and original, this new one looks so cheesy to me but again this will appeal to more general consumers due to the large infotainment screen with touchscreen ability, and increased interior room

I actually like the fact that they kept the same 2.5L and 6 speed auto, it's pretty much bulletproof, smooth and quiet, gets decent fuel economy.

Isn't the CX-5 made in Japan whereas the CX-50 is made in USA? I'm sure that alone is enough for some people to decide what they want.

CX-30 made in Mexico for added confusion :lol

They’re basically Japanese Saab.
Instead of night mode and fighter jet stuff, fanboys love the knobs n Jinba Ittai bs

They blow money on all sorts of weird shit, get acquired by a bigger company than wants their engine tech.

GM got Saab’s turbo expertise & turbo 4
Toyota used Skyactiv expertise to build Dynamic Force

And I LOVED Saab and was real sad when it was gone. I'd feel the same way about Mazda, I love their quirkiness but they seem like one economic crisis away from going bankrupt all the time because they want to plot their own course on damn near everything.

For the sake of their survival I wish they would just adopt Toyota powertrains for their commodity products (or have Toyota fund their powertrain work which then gets used in Toyota products - like the rumour of Toyota using Mazda's inline 6 in the next Supra). Don't build your own fricking hybrids!

Something about Japanese current gen 6 cylinder engines just aren't up to snuff.

Honda/Acura's 3.5 turbo V6 is weak
Mazda's inline 6 turbo is also weak
Toyota's V35A has good numbers but it's got reliability issues
Nissan's VR35 has porous blocks

BMW B58 is the gold standard, but even Mercedes M256 inline 6T is quite competitive, and none of them can measure up.

Japan has been weak since 90s when their bubble burst. They've never competed since 2jz or rb, the V8 v12 was always less power. Let alone the big displacement AMG, BMW motors. All they had was reliability to justify it, but now they don't even got reliability. It's like they never advanced since the 2000s, Honda always used that under powered 3.5, Subaru has been blowing head gaskets and spinning bearings while making 250hp all day everyday for the last 30 years.

The Japanese are catching up on 15 years of stuff that BMW and Ford learned about turbos.
Both took 5-10 years to really get it right: B58 and Ecoboost 4 cyl.

Now, Ford 2.3T IMO is the best 4 cyl turbo: strong all the way from idle to redline.
330hp/385lbft from 2.3T is really close to the Acura 3.0T
466hp/554lbft from 3.5 Ecoboost now looking a little weak next to S58 ("503" hp) and Hurricane (510/510)

refine the 8at and bring the cx-60 over

And I don't get why they keep wasting money developing their own tranny's, just use the 8at zf that handles way more power. Why do they need to build their own cvt or 10 speed.

sometimes it's what u can learn from it to build your next product.
they built their own to support their custom PHEV.

that said there was even a PHEV version of ZF8 they could've used.
probably a combo of packaging issue and Japanese pride.

Skyactiv 6AT was fucking fantastic.
Back in 2013 that thing was banging revmatched downshifts, super smooth.

Still don’t think there’s a better FWD trans.
Honda 10AT jerky, ZF9 Ass, Aisin 8AT is jerky and bad gear ratios unless it’s the BMW one.

Mazda 6AT was the best I've ever driven. Extremely smooth and smart, better than most 8s and 10s I've driven as long as you're not going up a hill.

That's not true, the 2GR was a winner from the very beginning. And actually, Toyota V6 were all pretty damn good with the 3VZ-FE (not the 3VZ-E in the 4Runner, different engine) to 1MZ to 3MZ. It was just unfortunate that they let the 2GR languish for that long as it had an almost 20 year run with minimal updates.

Complain about the trombone, but the later VQs were also decent motors, same with the Honda J35/37. They all made over 300hp in later guises but at the expense of fuel economy.

Ford took quite a few years to get the Ecoboost right. My honor of a world beating 4cyl goes to the VW/Audi EA888.

The ZF is a RWD tranny, Most of Mazda's lineup is still FWD, only the Miata and the CX70/80/90 (which is on the exact same platform) is RWD.

That said, from what others are saying about the tranny, Mazda has one of the better ones despite being old. There really isn't a lot of choose from on the market as the most prominent one is the Aisin 8sp, but that's a terrible product. Honda has a not very good 10 speed which they most likely won't sell to Mazda. BMW has a DCT which I don't think they'll sell to Mazda, and Mazda won't package and sell a CVT unless they have to.

The ZF8 PHEV isn't that efficient, ask me how I know :lol. Toyota's planetary gear or the standalone rear iAWD setup is significantly more efficient than the ZF8, but it seems like their iForce MAAXXXXXXXXX isn't that great on fuel either. I don't know of any other RWD setups out there, everything is FWD based.

To Mazda's credit the inline 6 (more correctly the whole powertrain) beats their competition in fuel economy - 25mpg combined versus 23mpg for the base Grand Highlander, and 21mpg for the Palisade and Pilot (base trim). I do find it pretty odd that they landed on a 3.3L displacement - it's not even a carryover combustion chamber. At the very least take that cylinder and release a 2.2L four cylinder version for their smaller cars and make it the basis of their next gen engines.

Yea that's why I say they are 20 year old cuz they never advanced since 2000, the Honda, Toyota, Nissan V6 were great then, but they never improved it. Toyota added turbos and made it even worse and more unreliable.

Perfect example is Acura tlx 2025 V6 turbo. How does a 3l turbo v6 make 355 HP, when turbo 4 was making that 10 years ago. Gtr 3.8 V6 making 480 HP 15 years ago. Even na 3.7 was like 330 HP already from 10+ years ago.

J series turbo was a budget conscious engineering/unit to hit a spec sheet target because it's low volume.
Toyota also doesn't sell enough Tundra/LS500 to spend a ton on V35A.

Compared to JWhatever which sells like 10k a year, B58 sells like 100k+ and adds...

$$$$ Fueling: Port injection, per-cylinder knock sensor, wideband O2 sensor and ECU/programming to handle it > much more precise fueling under boost
$$$ Transmission: ZF8 stronger than the Honda 10 speed
$$ Cooling: water to air intercooler, oil jets
$$ Internals: forged, not cast

Compared to V35A, Ecoboost is way better developed and specced but they sell a bajillion of them.
The 2.7 is actually more overbuilt than the 3.5.

Fueling: Port injection, wideband O2, modern Bosch ECUs, no PCV issues
Cooling: Outboard turbos (not hot-V), oil squirters, diesel style graphite iron block (2.7)
Internals: Forged pistons and rods, wider bearing surface.
Manufacturing: Ford spent a ton of manufacturing, unlike Toyota NA which had peanuts

That's great, they beat a severely underpowered Grand Highlander. The Grand Highlander was never going to get great fuel economy as you need to size the engine to the car. It's laughable what Toyota is doing to their lineup as everything is either 2.5 NA or 2.4t. They can't even game the fuel economy tests when the 2.4t is so undersized and stressed to haul a 4500lb car around. What is adequately slow on a Rav5 becomes hideously slow on a Highlander and up vehicle.

20 year old and never advanced as a broad brush doesn't quite work.

I'm not a fan of Nissan, but their VR35DET does make good power, 400hp in the RedSport, it's just poor quality control and engineering requirements that condemned that engine. They've done some gimmicky shit with the VC 4 cylinder which hasn't worked but they tried.

I don't know what Toyota was thinking with the 2GR, most likely the same thinking that had them not doing so well in the 2010s where bean counters took over. Toyota hasn't really made any good 4 cylinder engines since the 3S, though notably the 2ZZ was niche and interesting.

Honda has always ran their engines long, the B and D series engines ran from the 80s to the late 2000s. The K ran for 20 years as well. The J has been around even longer as well as they let Acura languish. Their 10 spd sucks, but there's nothing really out there except develop their own, same problem with Mazda.

Mazda always tried to do their own thing. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. Their L series engines were fairly reliable and made decent power (better known as MZR), going into millions of Fords and Mazdas alike. The L series turbo which went into the Mazdaspeed 3 and 6 were basically a POC for the current Ecoboost 4 cylinders. The Skyactiv 4 cylinders and trannies were great, handily beating their fuel economy ratings, though objectively they don't fair well in power against the older L series. The Skyactiv D engines were a disaster.

If you understand how Skyactiv NA engines work and the philosophies behind them, then you know that Skyactiv turbo engines don't make a whole lot of sense. The Skyactiv 4cyl turbos were a bandaid solution to keep up with near luxury manufacturer HP.

This is Mazda's first 6 cylinder engine since the V6 in the 90's 929, which would probably trace it's roots back to the 80's.

BMW struck gold with the B58, but that took a lot of lessons from the N54/55 and S55 engines. Like you said, they've gone through and paid their dues. Same with Ford with lots of issues with early Ecoboosts, cooling was a particular sore spot with the Mustangs 2.3t.

It's a weird place to be with the Japanese manufacturers, as I don't know if the govt's of the world has enough runway for them to develop these engines further. These might be it. At least Toyota has a pretty strong FWD hybrid/PHEV tech stack (RWD stuff seems weak). Some consolidation is probably due.

Meh trump got rid of the CAFE standards so they probably slow down on engine R&D.

It's kinda funny in the nineties all japanese engines in performance cars were turbocharged while the americans/euros were NA but now it's the other way with Japanese manufacturer recently getting into turbo engines.

I used to think that whatever Mazda was developing would make it into developing world, four-cylinder engines

but lately with Chinese EVs really takeover South America I think ICE will be a truck thing only from now on.

That's the thing, everything in 90s was turbo, it's like they forgot all that they've learnt and trying to learn it again now.

The Toyota 3.5 was in everything from Lexus, to sienna to Camry, you can't tell me they don't sell enough to continue development, higher displacement na to smaller displacement turbo. It's not like they were poor either. You can say smaller brands like Mazda, Mitsubishi had no money but not Toyota/ Lexus.

Toyota had lots of money, no idea what they did with it. They still have lots of monies.

90s turbos and the ones now are completely different, I'd say almost nothing carries over except for the concept of squishing more air in.

They built the LFA. :troll: