Mazda’s adding a new clean diesel to the ever pop­u­lar Mazda 6 fam­ily sedan. The new CRTD is based on the stan­dard 2.0L petrol, but only gains 6 kg despite tur­bocharg­ing and a bevy of improve­ments. The 136KW(185HP), 400nm motor promises to be an exer­cise in torque steer for the light sedan, but own­ers will be smil­ing with an impres­sive fuel econ­omy of 5.6L/100kms.  The new CRTD will be sent first to Europe, and it remains to be seen if motor will arrive in Australia.

Mazda Devel­ops new Clean Diesel Engine with Improved Out­put and Envi­ron­men­tal Performance

As a result, the new cat­a­lyst mech­a­nism reduces the amount of fuel required to burn off the par­tic­u­lates (soot). This improves the over­all fuel econ­omy, and results in lower CO2 emis­sions and cleaner exhaust gases.

[Source: Mazda]

Rumors have been fly­ing about a new per­for­mance ori­ented Toy­ota sports car hit­ting the per­for­mance scene for a con­sid­er­able time now, from an AE86 revival to a new Supra, but per­haps no one expected news that these shad­owy rumors would coa­lesce into the for­got­ten Cel­ica GT-​​4.

The last model Cel­ica. Will we see styling cues from this?

But per­haps even more sur­pris­ing is the rumor that the car will be engi­neered to a large degree by Sub­aru. In Novem­ber Toy­ota con­firmed rumours of a new sports car and Cel­ica replace­ment, with the sports car being a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Sub­aru and Toy­ota, and now it seems the car is the per­for­mance model of the Cel­ica line. How­ever, the new car will not come with a Toy­ota bred turbo four in the tra­di­tion of the (some­what) under­pow­ered motor of the old model — instead it’s going to be car­ry­ing a Sub­aru Boxer turbo, most recently seen in the all grown up Sub­aru Impreza WRX STi.

The new model is said to come in two dis­tinct per­for­mance vari­ants. First, the base ‘GT’, pack­ing a front engined, RWD dri­ve­train and nat­u­rally aspi­rated 2.0L 4 cylin­der Boxer (most likely from the Impreza RX), designed to slide in under the $20,000 bracket. Sec­ondly the full fat GT-​​4, which car­ries the new JDM STi’s 224KW (300HP) Boxer turbo and AWD sys­tem stan­dard, with Motor Trend claim­ing the engine will be closer to the cars fire­wall in order to facil­i­tate the instal­la­tion of in-​​wheel elec­tric motors to help with traction.

The GT and GT-​​4 will be built in in coupe and three-​​door hatch vari­ants, but no five door vari­ants because of Toy­ota and Sub­aru not want­ing to com­pete in the Impreza’s arena, which is rather tongue in cheek con­sid­er­ing this new car will inevitably be seen as either a Impreza in Toy­ota cloth­ing, or as direct com­pe­ti­tion by tuners. This begs the ques­tion then; will the new GT-​​4 be a real con­tender in the hotly con­tested price for per­for­mance bracket? Will the Toy­ota be lighter, faster, and more capa­ble than the new STi? Would Sub­aru shoot them­selves in the foot, and does it mat­ter con­sid­er­ing Toyota’s widen­ing stake in Sub­aru?

Does this mean Sub­aru will become more and more the per­for­mance arm of Toy­ota? Time will tell, but we cer­tainly hope not.

It turns out that Mit­subishi Europe has qui­etly released details on the Ral­liart Lancer.

Mit­subishi doesn�t state whether the Ral­liart will be based on the 4door Lancer or the upcom­ing 5door hatch, how­ever Carscoop states the USDM Ral­liart will be based on 4 door lancer sedan, whereas Europe will get the 5 door hatch. Since Aus­tralia clas­si­cally gets the clos­est equiv­a­lent on the JDM, we can expect to see the 4 door on our roads.

The Ral­liart is expected to run a detuned 177KW, 240PS ver­sion of the EVO X 2.0L, dual valve VVT turbo 4 cylin­der. Cou­pled to this is the mag­nif­i­cent 6-​​speed Twin Clutch SST trans­mis­sion, and AWD with Active Cen­tre Dif­fer­en­tial and Active Yaw Control.

The final form of the Ral­liart in Aus­tralia is unknown, but given the com­pe­ti­tion between Sub­aru and Mit­subishi in this seg­ment we can expect the Ral­liart to slot firmly into posi­tion against the stan­dard Sub­aru Impreza WRX — leav­ing the Evo X to tackle the WRX STi.

Being some­what given to fan­tasy here at IJ, we’d love to see that Sport­back con­cept repro­duced in full for the hatch­back. Given the stan­dard new Lancer is being hailed as a run­away suc­cess for Mitsu, a return of the Ral­liart Lancer is sure to be noth­ing less than a added cream in Mitsu’s prof­its in an age of high demand for fast, small, fuel effi­cient cars.

[Source: Carscoop]

 

The way it should have been? We’ll leave that deci­sion up to you and the ever vocal purists. But noth­ing can take away from the pure awe­some­ness of the Sky­line GT-R’s donk in that slick, black 300zx body.

We love the Toy­ota Supra, par­tic­u­larly the MKIV’s awe­some curves and potent 2JZ-​​GTE forged twin tur­bocharged inline 6 cylin­der. So we’d thought we’d cel­e­brate by round­ing up our top 10 favourite online videos of the Mark IV Supra in all it’s glo­ri­ous RWD action.

Turbo Dreams Video