2003 Mazda Protege5, Auto Blue 64k Miles, Excellent Condition, Garaged on 2040-cars

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R&T chases down a burglar in the million-mile Miata

Is the answer always Mazda Miata? We discussed this in passing on the Autoblog Podcast earlier this week, and most assuredly the answer is "no." For example, the little MX-5 would be a terrible people carrier, and it'd be useless off road. You can't really tow anything of substance with it, either. Still, if push came to shove, it's satisfying to know that the diminutive roadster could eke out a career as a chase vehicle for the police.
That fact was proven when Road & Track editor Chris Cantle did something that he himself recognizes as "stupid." Upon returning home, Cantle discovered a "twenty-something" actively burgling his home. The resulting story is easily one of the more entertaining episodes to come out of the 1990 MX-5's service to the team at R&T and, we're guessing, will be one of the highlights of the Million-Mile Miata challenge.
Be sure to head over to Road & Track for a full retelling of the chase from Cantle, as well as a follow-up on the saga.

Will Mazda sell diesel hybrids in Japan in 2016?

Could the "Zoom Zoom" automaker start making hybrids that go "glug glug glug"? Mazda, known for its fuel-efficient Skyactiv engine line, will be the first Japanese automaker to make a diesel-hybrid vehicle for Japan and Europe. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Mazda may start making its oil-burning hybrids as soon as 2016, and the powertrain may reach fuel efficiency levels of as much as 95 miles per gallon (one the more lenient Japanese driving cycle). That'd make such a vehicle line about 30 percent more fuel-efficient than standard diesels and about eight percent more fuel efficient that the Toyota Prius C compact hybrid (known as the Aqua in Japan). Mazda has been dismissive of hybrid and electric powertrains, instead focusing on Skyactiv technology to maximize fuel efficiency from conventional gas-powered engines. Diesel powertrains account for about half of the light-duty vehicles sold in Europe each year, while Japan's diesel sales of 76,000 vehicles last year were about three times as many as were sold there in 2012. In January, Mazda said that it would delay the introduction of its Skyactiv-D diesel engine from what was to be a spring 2014 debut. The reason was to fine-tune the engine's performance/fuel economy balance. Mazda representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from AutoblogGreen about the diesel hybrids.

How Mazda got Skyactiv-X to work is incredible

"Take everything you know about engines and turn it around," Mazda North America Vehicle Development Engineer Dave Coleman says, patiently and with a look of benevolent pity, as he's quizzed about the particulars of the company's new engine. The Skyactiv-X engine is enigmatic — and deceptively simple in operation. And the bottom line for American consumers is that they'll be able to buy a car (or crossover; we don't know yet what vehicle will first get it) by late 2019 that provides diesel-like fuel economy but runs on regular old gasoline. In between diesel and spark ignition, but it's neither To truly understand it, you have to dive into the contradictions. Take that regular old gasoline: Contrary to common sense, the lower the octane, the better it works. In the lab, the Skyactiv-X engine loves 80 octane. The lowest Americans get is 87, so the engine is tuned for that octane. Go higher and you lose some low-end torque. Coleman was right. It's hard to wrap your head around an engine that thrives just at the point when most gas engines would aggressively self-destruct. It uses a supercharger to pump additional air — but not additional fuel. It uses spark plugs to start a combustion cycle that normally doesn't need a spark. And, quixotically, it's not displacing Mazda's own American-market diesel engine, currently languishing in a seemingly endless hell of regulatory approval. More bizarre: Mazda is a tiny automaker facing real existential headwinds, and gasoline compression ignition is a massive challenge. GM and Hyundai announced compression ignition, or HCCI, projects (full name, homogeneous charge compression ignition) to great fanfare, but they never amounted to a production hill of beans, crippled by reliability issues or horrible vibrations. Worse, they only worked at an unusably narrow range — low RPMs and low loads. HCCI research improved direct-injection gas and diesel engine technologies for these companies, but HCCI itself remains untamed. The benefits of lean combustion Why even try to tame HCCI? The answer is much better fuel economy and lower emissions. Less burned carbon-based fuel, less carbon dioxide released. That's simple. But there are some thermodynamic reasons for the lean combustion you can achieve with compression ignition that are worth explaining. The ideal amount of fuel for a conventional engine to burn is about a 14:1 air-to-fuel ratio. That lets every molecule burn nicely, in theory.