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Farmer moves illegally parked car with tractor

Bad parking in London can get you a ticket or the boot, but bad parking in the West Country is treated in a more direct manner. One motorist learned this fact in early May when a video published by The Daily Mail showing a farmer moving a car with his tractor went viral. Lianne Dunn and Ally Boxall were out for a drive near Marksbury when they came upon a strange sight. Coming at them down the narrow country lane was a tractor with a red Mazda6 perched on its front-end loader attachment. One of the women pulled out her cell phone and filmed the odd scene while the other backed into a convenient driveway to let the tractor past. As the tractor trundled by with its load, they asked the young man guiding the driver what was going on. "They parked in this chap's drive," he said in his broad, West Country burr. "He asked us to move the car, nobody claimed it." When asked where the pair were taking the car, the unnamed farmer replied, "We're going to put it up on the main road. It's the police's problem then." The two women, obviously entertained by the spectacle, exchange a few more words with the young farmer before they finally drive off. "This is the best!" one of the women says as on the video. "Never piss a farmer off!" News Source: The Daily Mail, The Western Gazette Humor Weird Car News Mazda Nissan Driving Diesel Vehicles Sedan parking tractor farmer

Junkyard Gem: 1986 Mazda 323 DX Hatchback

Mazda built generation after generation of the Familia, starting with the Giugiaro-styled machines of the 1960s. The first Familia that sold well in North America was called the GLC (for "Great Little Car"), and it began life as a rear-wheel-drive cousin to the RX-7 before the Familia went to a front-wheel-drive platform for the 1981 model year. The GLC name stuck around these parts through 1985 — and I've documented a few discarded examples of these now-rare machines during my junkyard travels — before getting the 323 name starting in the 1986 model year. It's no sweat to find 1990s 323s in junkyards, but I've been scouring the car graveyards of the land for the elusive early 323 and, finally, found this moss-encrusted '86 in a San Francisco Bay Area yard. BMW popularized the lower-case-i nomenclature for fuel-injected cars with the first 3-Series back in the 1977 model year, and Mazda wasted no time making "1.6i" badges to tout the futuristic technology under the hood of their low-priced econo-commuter a decade later. At a time when most Civics had carburetors (and the notorious "Map of the Universe" diagram to untangle the underhood vacuum lines), the electronically fuel-injected engine in this car was a major selling point indeed. It wouldn't be many more years before the wretched Subaru Justy was the final carbureted Japanese car available in America, but this 1.6-liter B6 four-cylinder (which evolved into the engine that, flipped 90 degrees, powered the early Miatas) was high-tech stuff for a cheap car in 1986. Just 84 horsepower, but they were clean and reliable horses. In the middle 1980s, the common perception in North America was that you had to buy a Honda or Toyota if you wanted an affordable car that could make it to 200,000 miles. This 323 held together just as well as most Tercels or Civics from 1986. Of course, I've seen a junkyard RX-7 with 393,854 miles, so you just never know. When you see lots of moss and lichens on a car in a Northern California junkyard, you know it spent years — maybe decades — languishing in a shady outdoor spot. Perhaps this car racked up 20,000 miles per year slogging through a harrowing Lodi-to-Sausalito commute, then got parked and forgotten in 1996. We'll never know. With the optional automatic transmission — nearly every early 323 I've seen had the 5-speed manual — this car wouldn't have been much fun to drive. Point A to Point B would have been fine, though.

China's FAW now building all three Mazda6 generations

The Chinese auto market is one of the most interesting in the world to look at. Its automakers appear to still be figuring things out and remain open to experimentation. For example, at this moment, you can buy new copies of all three generations of the Mazda6 from showrooms there.
Mazda joint-venture partner FAW recently introduced the latest generation to China as the Mazda6 Atenza, according to Just Auto. Yet buyers still have the option of getting the previous generation as well, which is sold as the Mazda6 Ruiyi. Obviously, that isn't too remarkable - companies in the US have briefly sold two generations of the same nameplate simultaneously for brief points in the past, and the practice is much more common in developing markets. However, Chinese consumers still have the third choice, too - the first-generation model that dates back to the early 2000s, is still on offer, known simply as Mazda6.
While it would be hard to imagine selling three generations of the same models at once in the US, the idea is an interesting one. We enjoyed our long-term test of the latest generation, and the previous models weren't bad cars either, so provided there's a healthy difference in pricing and marketplace confusion is limited by differing names, we can see it working. If nothing else, it's a fascinating illustration of how broad China's developing auto market really is.