Mazda engineers built a V6 MX-5 20 years ago

Two decades ago engineers at Mazda Europe secretly plonked a 2.5-litre V6 into Mazda MX-5, and found a few issues.

Christian Schultze, Mazda Europe’s director of research and operations, revealed to AutoRAI.nl the company’s European engineers built a prototype MX-5 with a 2.5-litre V6.

Although Mr Schultze doesn’t mention which generation of MX-5 the V6 was fitted to, we presume it was the third-generation ‘NC’ MX-5 as it went into production in 2005.

The NC is to-date the largest MX-5, but the engineers found packaging the V6 problematic as “the engine didn’t fit well under the bonnet [as] it was simply too high [and] the result wasn’t visually appealing”.

According to Mr Schultze, the driving experience “was definitely interesting”. No word on which version of the K-Series V6 was employed, but it was likely a Euro-spec variant used in the earlier 626, MX-6 and Xedos 9/Eunos 800, which was rated at around 125kW and 216Nm.

For reference, the 2.0-litre MX-5 of the time had 125kW and 190Nm to its name.

The MX-5 V6 wasn’t an officially sanctioned project, but something done by Mazda’s European engineers “in their spare time”.

Although this endeavour went nowhere, earlier skunkworks programs have found their way into showrooms.

While the MX-5’s main reasons for being are its balance, nimbleness, and driving enjoyment no matter the speed, there has always been a low, but steady, drumbeat for more power.

In the early 2000s Mazda briefly answered that call with a pair of turbocharged second-generation ‘NB’ MX-5s. The first was the Australian-developed SP, which boosted the 1.8-litre engine’s output from 109kW/168Nm to 150kW/280Nm, and was sold in limited quantities locally.

A few years later there was a globally available Mazdaspeed model — branded in Australia as the SE — with a 133kW/226Nm engine, which traded oomph for affordability.

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