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RWD

20K views 7 replies 7 participants last post by  rea98d 
#1 ·
How about a RWD Mazda 3 that looks stock, but has either the rotary engine or the 2.5? It would be a sleeper to the untrained eye. Why do you have to buy an expensive luxury car or impractical sports car to get RWD?
 
#4 ·
Because majority of time RWD is impractical and far more expensive than a FWD car is.

Sports car, sure, big woop... but then the 3 is no longer in the class it was meant for or will ever be in.



DIY, it's just a bunch of parts from a mazdaspeed6, and CX class.
only have to double the price you paid for the car.

And then decrease it's value by 100%
and hope it works.

RWD Mz3s have been attempted, but it's highly impractical and costs a shitton.

DG Motorsports made an AWD Speed 3 from various speed 6 and CX parts.


But at the end of the day, it's no longer a family car.
 
#5 ·
[quote author=XCNuse link=topic=184786.msg4071486#msg4071486 date=1310696764]
Because majority of time RWD is impractical and far more expensive than a FWD car is.

Sports car, sure, big woop... but then the 3 is no longer in the class it was meant for or will ever be in.



DIY, it's just a bunch of parts from a mazdaspeed6, and CX class.
only have to double the price you paid for the car.

And then decrease it's value by 100%
and hope it works.

RWD Mz3s have been attempted, but it's highly impractical and costs a shitton.

DG Motorsports made an AWD Speed 3 from various speed 6 and CX parts.


But at the end of the day, it's no longer a family car.
[/quote]

Perhaps more importantly, to put a RWD engine in the 3 chassis, you'd have to hack up the floor to make space for the drive shaft, and relocate the fuel tank and muffler. Unless you're building a one-off racecar (a la Ken Block Fiesta thing), it doesn't make sense to do this for a vehicle like the 3, which they appear to be selling a blue million of as-is.

Far more plausible would be an AWD Speed3 variant, that might compete with the Impreza WRX.
 
#8 ·
Why would it be any more plausible to make an AWD car? You'd run into the same fuel tank and muffler issues you would with a RWD car. Nabbing the AWD parts from the corporate parts bin to run a driveshaft to the rear would look like a great way to make a RWD 3 On my 2015 Mz3, the muffler is behind the rear suspension, and wouldn't be in the way anyway.

The only problem I might see is fitting the gearbox, since it will be behind the engine instead of underneath it.

For pure benchracing purposes, you could avoid that issue by turning the entire FWD drivetrain sideways and welding up the differential. Of course, you'd need a 1:1 rear diff if you did that, otherwise combining the stock transaxle's final drive ratio with the one in the rear diff would give you an unrealistically low final drive ratio.
 
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