Mazda Australia keen for performance Mazda3 and CX-30

Mazda Australia has reiterated its desire for more highperformance models in its line-up.

The sticking point for the Japanese car-maker is that the performance pair is currently only manufactured in lefthand drive for the North American market.

Mazda Australia marketing director Alastair Doak said the brand was constantly putting its hand up for the performance variants.

“We’re very jealous as it is not available in right-hand drive at this point, and that’s just a resource-volume thing,” he said.

“So we keep asking and we will continue to keep asking. It’s not ruled out entirely, but it’s not ruled in, it’s just a case of every time we see the program managers that can influence the decisions we keep going, ‘remember, remember’, so we’ll keep doing that.”

While Mazda’s home market is right-hand drive, Mr Doak said performance iterations of its small hatch and SUV duo would not achieve the popularity required in Japan for righthand drive production.

“Those kind of cars don’t really sell in Japan, so the volume’s not there, and obviously Europe has got its targets around CO2, so when you take all that out, right-hand drive is a tough proposition,” he said.

For reference, and as the name suggests, the 2.5 Turbo pair employs the same 2.5-litre turbocharged fourcylinder petrol engine as found in the likes of the CX-9, CX-5 and Mazda6, producing an uprated 186kw-434nm when running on premium unleaded fuel.

When running on standard unleaded, the outputs drop to the standard 170kw-420nm as found on the other models. Those peak outputs place the 2.5 Turbo 47kw clear of the naturally aspirated 2.5-litre engine in the Mazda3 and CX-30, while its healthy 434Nm torque figure clearly outmuscles the atmo engine by a considerable 182Nm.

Its outputs would put the Mazda3 in hot hatch territory for the first time since the MPS version was retired in 2013, and would do battle with the likes of the Volkswagen Golf GTI and Ford Focus ST.

A hot version of the CX-30 would wade into battle against a smaller crop of hot SUVS such as the incoming Hyundai Kona N and Volkswagen T-roc R, albeit with a less overt performance bent.

Both models send power to all four wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission.