It's weight.
The Euro-spec sedan with a 2.5-liter gasoline engine, automatic transmission and i-ELOOP brake energy regeneration system weighs 2,992 pounds. That's a 337-pound weight loss over the current Mazda6 with the automatic.
Chew on that for a second. The heavier automatic-equipped one is under 3000 pounds. With A/C, power everything, a bazillion airbags, etc, etc...
Now imagine a manual-trans version, add some lighter wheels, take out the spare, etc...
That is a light mid-size sedan, by any standard.
Regen braking means big batteries too. Very impressive. Can't wait to see what Mazda builds for a Toyobaru competitor.
Edit: Wait no it just uses a big capacitor:
Still, pretty good weight.
Awesome. I heard 3.9L/100km (60US mpg) on the diesel variant as well. Now hopefully they've finally fixed that whole rust thing. Mazda 3's rust at an embarrassing rate up here in the rust belt.
I was impressed when the newest Altima came out 150 lbs lighter than the previous one. Looks like Mazda more than doubled that improvement - extremely impressive.
I am SO looking forward to the next Miata. It's also planned for the lightening treatment.
Wifey and I have been talking new car for her for awhile. The Grand Prix has been with us for almost 7 years and is over 130K miles now. It's actually still in great shape, but the lack of LATCH in the rear seat drives her nuts (and will get worse when mini-Jav switches seats and/or we make mini-Jav the 2nd) and the in-town mileage is poor. She comes from turbo cars though, so she won't drive anything slow.
I'm hoping for the 300TQ Sky-D CX-5 or the Mazda6 as the replacement next year, we'll see.
Javelin wrote:
It's weight.
The Euro-spec sedan with a 2.5-liter gasoline engine, automatic transmission and i-ELOOP brake energy regeneration system weighs 2,992 pounds. That's a 337-pound weight loss over the current Mazda6 with the automatic.
Chew on that for a second. The heavier automatic-equipped one is under 3000 pounds. With A/C, power everything, a bazillion airbags, etc, etc...
Now imagine a manual-trans version, add some lighter wheels, take out the spare, etc...
That is a *light* mid-size sedan, by any standard.
That is a light car in gneral by modern standards, I think BMWs are required to start at 4000lbs (sarcasm)
i-ELOOP. What a great, awkward acronym.
