Yes, I know that sounds just like Jack Black giving you rock tips, but I assure you the metaphor is at least somewhat valid.

Indeed, the Mazdaspeed 3 packs a whole lot more horsepower into a much lower cost than a lot of its competitors.  That and it looks like a blue whale with an evil grin, and that’s a lot more personality than a lot of other car models can say they bring to the table.

Of course, it’ll be up to you if you want to drop twenty five thousand bucks or so on what amounts to a supercharged station wagon, but for Mazda fans, this might be exactly what you’re after.

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The Mazdaspeed 3 has been finally launched in the U.S., joining the many many other cars that have been unveiled there by other manufacturers. While Ford chose to go with Volvo inline-5 engines for the hot hatch versions of the technically similiar Focus, Mazda developed their own turbocharged 2.3 liter direct injection online-4 engine for the Mazda 3 and Mazda 6.

The new Mazdaspeed 3 (also called the Mazda 3 MPS) comes in the 5-door body, and its engine puts out 263 horses at 5,500rpm and 380Nm of torque at 3,000rpm, not quite up there with the ultra-quick spooling ability of Volkswagen and BMW turbo engines but somehow only the European marques seem to be able to achieve that.

The 6-speed transmission’s gear ratios (gear 2 to 5) have also been revised to be slightly taller to take advantage of all 380 Newton meters of torque. There is a torque management system which tries to rein in the torque steer based on which gear the car is in and the steering angle.

(Source) Paul Tan

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