One wonders if there's a tie-in with Isuzu, another Japanese manufacturer who ploughs their own furrow.
The Isuzu Giga of some 10/15 years ago boasted a 30 litre V10 NA Diesel engine, in a world where everyone else stopped at just over 1/3 up to 1/2 that CC and forced the induction instead, very old school very conservative thinking in many ways, unstressed is good...the largest NA truck engine i'd known of before was the 19 litre Fiat (V8 i believe but don't hold me to it) from the 80's.
I doubt the Mazda will find many customers in western Europe, but in other places where fuel tax isn't almost the last thing propping up the dying economies it should find some willing buyers.
A while back while browsing a website which lists vehicles for sale in Japan and I came upon a Nissan Big Thumb (I know!). This was a pretty hardcore looking recovery truck, but what struck me was that it had a 21 litre engine. Some investigation on t'internet revealed that this was a n/a V10 diesel, but also that it wasn't the biggest engine available on the Big Thumb. That honour went to the 26.5 litre version, also a n/a V10, packing up to 520PS and 1814NM of torque @ 1200RPM.
But going back to the CX60, the theory behind the big (for these days) engine is not a new one at all (similar to the above, but with reliability likely the main aim rather than efficiency). They (Mazda) reckon a big engine in a relatively low state of tune will be more efficient than a smaller engine working harder.
I find this with the CX-60 very weird - Mazda have for ages now refused to sell a large chunk of its range in the UK, especially higher output petrol engined cars such as the 2.5 SA-G Turbo in the Mazda3, 6 etc.
It seems strange to say the least why they persist using the Skyactiv-X engine in Japan and Europe (and all the huge amount of R&D that went into it) but not selling cars fitted with it in North America and other markets, whilst simultaneously using the 2.5 SA-G and turbocharged version there.
They must be spending fortunes on developing paprellel tech which other makes like VAG and Hyundai/KIA stick to one platform on a worldwide basis, presumably saving on costs by just scaling up/down engine types, whether petrol, diesl or hybrid.
Mazda meanwhile introduces yet another completely different diesel (after ditching their short-lived but not unreliable 1.8TD and keeping [for now] the seemingly poorly-designed 2.2TD [to me, anyway]) that seems way overpowered for the car, and developing an all-new rotary engined range-extender hybrid just for one car that probably won't sell in that many numbers.
Add to that using a Toyota Yaris clone which will sell as well as the late 90s 121 (Fiesta clone with an average Mazda 1.3 engine) and this all seems like a rather chaotic design studio to me - there doesn't seem like any coherent plan of where they are going, especially with them getting into EVs in a very slow way as well.
Proverbially backing (almost - no fuel cell cars) the horse rarely gets much oif a return on the investment, in my view.
|
