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Junkyard Gem: 1992 Mazda MX-3

Back in the early 1990s, American car shoppers could choose from an extravaganza of sporty-looking front-wheel-drive coupes. The Geo Storm GSi may have offered the most performance per dollar, but the early Mazda MX-3 made a lot of sense as a reasonably fun commuter car. The MX-3, based on the 323/Protege chassis (and thus a close cousin to the Ford Escort of the same era) could be purchased in the United States for the 1992 through 1996 model years, and junkyard examples have become very hard to find. Here's a '92 in a Colorado Springs yard. MX-3 buyers could get a 1.8-liter V6 with 130 horsepower in 1992, but this is the SOHC 1.6-liter four with just 88 horses. Dual-overhead-cam versions of this engine went into the Miata and most members of the 323/Escort family. With an automatic transmission, you had a sedate, sensible commuter appliance that looked fairly sharp in the business-park lot. With the DOHC 1.6-liter engine (available for the last few years of MX-3 sales here), these cars were quick. In the early days of the 24 Hours of Lemons, a team with a pair of MX-3s dominated the Southern races for several years. They didn't have much power, but reliability and predictable handling wins endurance races. Not very close to the magical 200,000-mile mark. Another in my series of Junkyard Car With Pikes Peak photographs. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Such an adventurous car. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The small-displacement V6 was a big selling point in Japan. Related Video:

2016 Mazda2 gets EPA-rated 43 mpg highway

To paraphrase the famous quote from astronaut Neil Armstrong, that's one small step for man and one giant leap for the Mazda2. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has weighed in on the new Mazda2 version, and says it gets a fuel-economy rating of 33 miles per gallon city and 43 mpg highway with a six-speed automatic transmission. Stick-shift gas-mileage figures are 31 city and 42 highway, which are still substantially better than the 29/35 rating from the most recent iteration of the model. That's about a 15-percent jump in fuel economy, people. More importantly, the Mazda2 beats out competitors such as the Hyundai Accent, Kia Rio Eco and even the Honda Fit in terms of fuel efficiency, which is pretty good company. The Mazda2 boasts a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine. But it is the upgrade to six-speed transmissions in both manual and automatic versions that seem to be making the biggest difference in the ratings. Mazda started unveiling details about the next-generation Mazda2 last year, and last fall began production of the model at Mazda's new factory in Salamanca, Mexico. At that time, the Japanese automaker had already sold more than 2.4 million Mazda2 vehicles since the model's introduction in 1996. Related Video:

Honda may recall up to 1M vehicles for airbag issue, following Toyota's lead

It seems Toyota won't be the only one recalling the faulty Takata airbag inflators for long. Honda insiders in Japan claim that the company is getting close to announcing its own worldwide campaign that would begin before the end of June.
Unnamed sources close to Honda in Japan tell Automotive News that the company is pursuing an internal investigation into possibly affected models and is working with Takata to gather more information. They claim that it could involve even more than the 1.14 million cars worldwide that the automaker covered under the first recall for the problem in April 2013, including 561,000 vehicles in the US.
Toyota jumpstarted this process last week when it recalled over 2 million cars worldwide, including 844,277 in the US. Soon after, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began a preliminary evaluation into the issue following six reported incidents, and started assembling data about potentially affected models from Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Chrysler. NHTSA also began investigating Takata itself.