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Mazda
The Mazda B spec offering is based off of the Mazda 2 platform with the kit to come from Mazdaspeed, Mazda’s competition arm. We first tried out a bone stock Mazda 2 on Streets of Willow to warm up a bit and become familiar with the platform.
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| Honda and Mazda brought out a couple of stock Fits and Mazda 2's for us to get started on before sampling the racers. |
The Mazda 2 is a subcompact 5 door coupe powered by a 1500cc all aluminum DOHC engine with variable cam timing. It is a pretty pedestrian engine pumping out 100 hp @ 6000 rpm with 98 lb/ft of torque @ 4000 rpm through a 5 speed manual transmission. It is probably a pretty practical engine with good fuel economy but the power and rev range is nothing to make your heart beat very quickly.
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| A stock B Segment car is a yawner down the straights hitting only into the 70's before entering turn 1. |
The handsomely styled unibody chassis is pretty lightweight at 2306 lbs with a MacPherson strut and antisway bar front suspension and a twist beam rear axle with divorced springs/shocks in the back. 10.2 inch front disc brakes are used to slow the car while 7.9 inch drums bring up the rear. In all, on the surface the car is a real yawner. After driving the stock version however, we feel a lot better about it.
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| The Mazda 2 rotated enough for us to do a few inadvertent dirt drops with the outside rear wheel in a few turns! |
Pulling on to the track the first thing we noticed about the stock Mazda 2 is that it is a pretty slow car. However my AE86 was a pretty slow car too. The engine has some bottom end grunt but runs out of breath quickly and the 6300 rpm redline comes quickly. The engine feels buzzy and not too inspiring.
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| The stock Mazda 2 exhibited a fair amount of body roll in hard cornering. It still had good under/oversteer balance and could be made to oversteer which made it fast in the turns. |
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| Body roll or not, the Mazda 2 exhibited good balance and minimal understeer. |
