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By
EWAN KENNEDY
8 December 2008
“Sometimes,”
said Mazda Australia's PR chief, Glenn Butler, with a slightly
wistful note in his voice, “people buy a diesel engine for
reasons other than fuel economy.”
The
wistful note was understandable, because hindsight says Mazda
couldn’t have picked a worse time for the launch of turbo-diesel
variants of its Mazda6 range.
We
have written before about the ridiculous price difference between
petrol and diesel fuel in Australia at the moment. Diesel
typically costs about 25 to 35 per cent more than petrol, a figure
can completely wipe out the 20 to 30 per cent lower fuel usage of
diesel engines.
Hopefully
for Mazda's sake, and for the sake of drivers who want to their
cars to put fewer CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, that
situation won’t last and diesel prices will drop to similar
levels to those of petrol.
Butler
explained that he hoped the big selling point of the
new-generation Mazda turbo-diesel will be its performance. The 400
Newton metre engine has the sort of torque that normally requires
a large six-cylinder, even a small V8 engine. Torque that gives
the Mazda6 MZR-CD the ability to accelerate in the important
overtaking range of 80 to 120 km/h in a mere 5.8 seconds. In other
words with the overtaking safety margins normally only offered by
a V8 engine.
Yet
the Mazda's official fuel consumption of only 5.9 litres per
hundred kilometres is less than half of that of the typical Aussie
V8.
The
new engine is a 2.2-litre unit producing 136 kW and the
aforementioned torque peak is developed all the way from 1800 rpm
to 3000 revs. So most drivers will be in the best torque band
almost all of the time.
The
only real problem we found with the engine during our first drive
at the car’s introduction to the press is that it’s reluctant
to do much work below 1500 rpm. In steady state cruising it’s
fine at that speed, but if you need extra torque for hill climbing
or to overtake a gear downchange in the six-speed manual gearbox
is pretty well essential.
Note
that there's no automatic transmission option at this stage. Nor
is one anticipated until at least 2011. Australian drivers are
unusual in wanting automatic diesels, just about everywhere else
drivers want the added economy offered by a manual.
There's
some turbo lag, something that’s inevitable in any engine of
this type, but the clever new design of the turbo and the intake
system keeps this to a reasonable minimum. Noise levels are
pleasingly low for an engine of this type. At idle there's some of
the typical diesel clatter, but this new engine is significantly
better than average for its class.
After
it launched the first-generation Mazda6 diesel in 2006, Mazda
found that almost all sales were of the station wagon. This time
around it’s made the interesting move of fitting the engine to
the Sports version of the hatchback instead of the midrange model.
This is probably a smart decision given the high torque and the
sporting credentials of the new diesel. But time will tell whether
buyers see it the same way.
The
Sports level of the ‘6 turbo-diesel is fitted with 18-inch alloy
wheels, leather trim, a Bose sound system, powered driver’s
seat, bi-xenon headlights that have an adaptive function so they
shine their way around corners, and parking sensors front and
rear.
The
wagon is certainly no stripped down special as it has six airbags,
17-inch alloys, automatic headlights and wipers, dual-zone
climate-controlled air conditioning and a six-disc CD player that
can handle MP3 inputs.
To
try and get a toehold for the turbo-diesel in these trying market
conditions Mazda Australia has priced the wagon at a pretty
reasonable $1490 over the cost of the petrol wagon, so the
turbo-diesel costs $36,690. The Sports hatch has a recommended
retail price of $43,890.
Both
models are on sale now and your local Mazda dealer will be more
than happy to give you an introductory test drive.
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Marque Publishing Company
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