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

Mazda Motor Cor­po­ra­tion has devel­oped a greatly improved clean diesel engine that offers out­put and envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance com­pa­ra­ble to a gaso­line engine. It will be pro­gres­sively intro­duced to mar­kets around the world, begin­ning in Europe in 2009.

The newly devel­oped MZR-​​CD 2.2 clean diesel engine has a dis­place­ment ten per­cent greater than Mazda’s cur­rent MZR-​​CD 2.0-liter diesel, and achieves top class torque of 400 New­ton meters. Improved fuel injec­tors and a lower com­pres­sion ratio con­tribute to its enhanced fuel effi­ciency. Addi­tion­ally, the engine’s diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) fea­tures a Mazda-​​developed world-​​first cat­a­lyst acti­va­tion mech­a­nism that enhances the removal of par­tic­u­late mat­ter (soot) from the exhaust gases. The new cat­alytic com­bus­tion treat­ment process enables the DPF to burn off par­tic­u­late mat­ter approx­i­mately 60 per­cent faster than cur­rent sys­tems. Due to this tech­ni­cal advance­ment, the MZR-​​CD 2.2 is clean enough to qual­ify for the Euro 5 emis­sions stan­dards. (This is based on a Mazda in-​​house assessment.)

Fur­ther­more, the addi­tion of a dual bal­ance shaft and a more rigid engine block has resulted in a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in engine vibra­tion, and helps achieve extremely quiet operation.

Main fea­tures of the new MZR-​​CD 2.2 clean diesel engine
–2.2-liter DOHC com­mon rail turbo diesel engine
–Top class high per­for­mance clean diesel engine:
–136 kW/​185PS max­i­mum power out­put
–400 Nm max­i­mum torque
–Excel­lent fuel econ­omy of 5.6 L/​100 km
–Greatly improved quietness

Newly devel­oped diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF)
Mazda’s new clean diesel engine has a high ther­mal resis­tance diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) with a cat­a­lyst that opti­mizes the com­bus­tion of soot in the exhaust. The cat­a­lyst fea­tures a pro­pri­etary world-​​first acti­va­tion mech­a­nism. Com­bined with more pre­cise engine con­trol, this mech­a­nism dou­bles the inter­val between DPF regen­er­a­tion cycles, and reduces the time to com­plete the regen­er­a­tion process to a third of the time nec­es­sary for con­ven­tional systems.

Cat­a­lysts use the oxy­gen con­tained in exhaust gases to burn off par­tic­u­late mat­ter. In order to ini­ti­ate com­bus­tion, the tem­per­a­ture of the exhaust gas must be increased. This requires addi­tional fuel, which adversely affects over­all fuel economy.

The ceramic base mate­r­ial in Mazda’s unique cat­a­lyst has a mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture that enables the easy move­ment of oxy­gen stored within it. This extra oxy­gen can be sup­plied as required to sig­nif­i­cantly increase the rate of par­tic­u­late mat­ter com­bus­tion, effec­tively the DPF regen­er­a­tion speed.

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]

The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.

Brows­ing the local blo­gos­phere (PaulTan.org to be exact) we were sur­prised to hear news that the pre­vi­ously announced Sub­aru Tur­bod­iesel Boxer engine has been on show at Frank­furt. The new motor is the first of it’s kind, a hor­i­zon­tally opposed turbo diesel four cylin­der engine, and we expect it’ll be in a vari­ant of the new Impreza, and per­haps the local Lib­erty in the future.

Power comes in at 110KW (147HP), which is on par with the nat­u­rally aspi­rated 2.0L petrol engine. Torque comes in with a meaty 350Nm of torque. The engine is 2.0L in capacity.

There’s no men­tion of fuel effi­ciency, but you can expect it to be good, even bet­ter than the petrol N/​A. With that much torque, you could almost use an hypo­thet­i­cal tur­bod­iesel Boxer Impreza as a tow car.