Car & Driver Archive: 2006 Mazdaspeed 6 First Impressions

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Sad-Anteater-2908@reddit

My old man picked one of these up brand new from a bug eye WRX. It was a cool car but I still remember the engine absolutely fell on its face and ran out of air in the upper RPMS.

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Mnm0602@reddit

So true I loved my MS6 but you might as well shift at 5500 because you weren’t getting much above that. Plenty of torque down low though and AWD was fun in the snow.

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Wasn't the Speed3 the same? Seems like Mazda tunes all their turbos like this. The gen 4 turbo 3 is even worse. It falls off a cliff in the 4k range. Makes sense for the newer cars though, they are tuned for daily driving, not shenanigans.

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DoritoDog33@reddit

Yes, they were torque monsters. The MS3 torque steered like crazy in 1st and 2nd, and that was with the factory conservative tune. They did fall on their face once you got up to 5000 - 5500 rpms

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kiIIinemsoftly@reddit

That's how a lot of modern turbos are. My Fiesta has a 6500rpm redline but you should shift at that same 5000-5500rpm range because there's no power after that. Tradeoff for that low-end power I suppose. Works well for a daily though.

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motoguy@reddit

it was like a FWD muscle car in terms of power delivery, so fun. had a lot of character.

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Windows-XP-Home-NEW@reddit

Why did they always promote this car in silver whereas the normal 6 was promoted in all the fun colors?

Like damn Mazda, send the orange one over to reviewers or smth.

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Thomas_633_Mk2@reddit

They never made them in those colours: the Mazda3/6 yellow, dark green and blue weren't on the MPS6

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Windows-XP-Home-NEW@reddit

some other fun color then

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Thomas_633_Mk2@reddit

They didn't make them in any fun colour dude, they were red or monochrome

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Windows-XP-Home-NEW@reddit

Red is fun.

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Ray1340@reddit

Back then we had multiple choices for fun cars.

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mrpoonjikkara@reddit

I still have mine.

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lifegoeson2702@reddit (OP)

That gen of 6 is so good looking & timeless. Even the interior still looks modern.

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Thomas_633_Mk2@reddit

Even the interior still looks modern.

Mazda did good interiors during the 2000s but no 20 year old car looks modern inside

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Windows-XP-Home-NEW@reddit

Even the interior still looks modern.

No it doesn’t. And hands on it feels even worse lmfao.

The only part that feels modern is the tablet-esque navigation that sticks out the top of the dash if you got the <1% with a navigation system.

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Riverrattpei@reddit

The only part that feels modern is the tablet-esque navigation that sticks out the top of the dash if you got the <1% with a navigation system.

Our RX-8 had that and if anything it made the interior feel even older because of how incredibly outdated it was

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jse000@reddit

I recall that while this stacked up on paper to similar offerings, it never really matched up to the STI/Evo, nor was it really adopted by the tuner community.

The Mazdaspeed 3 on the other hand was all over the place.

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