2020 Mazda CX-30Derek McNaughton / Driving What is it?By now, its a universal truth that we Canadians are hungry for SUVs and crossovers. Well, Mazda wants to satisfy our appetites with the CX-30, a new crossover slotting between the CX-3 and CX-5, at the Los Angeles Auto Show.Why does it matter?The CX-5 is, without a doubt, Mazdas bread-and-butter crossover. So, its easy to see why theyd want to capitalize on the success after all, its hands-down Mazdas best-seller. Problem is, the CX-5 can be a bit too big for some buyers enter the CX-3, right? Well, that ones a bit too tight, particularly in the rear seat and cargo area.This is where the CX-3 comes into play. Not quite as big as the CX-3 yet not quite as tight as the CX-5, consider the CX-30 as the Goldilocks. From the outside, the CX-30 is essentially a restyled CX-5 with a sleeker roofline its genuinely attractive, embracing Mazdas Kodo design language with a thin and wide grille, slim headlights, and some clever contouring in the sheet metal thats not quite visible to the naked eye until certain light and reflections happen to hit the sides just right.Check out all of our latest auto show coverage hereInside, the CX-30 is immediately familiar. Sharing an overall interior layout with the Mazda3, fit-and-finish is absolutely impeccable. An 8.8-inch display handles infotainment duties, while a seven-inch digital display in the gauge cluster is standard. Naturally, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity are standard, and Mazda offers its latest suite of active safety features are available blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert is standard on the base GX, but youll have to step up to the mid-level GS if you want goodies like adaptive cruise control, forward-collision alert, and lane-keep assist, among others. The GT adds a couple of new tricks up its sleeve in this department, including rear automatic braking. The CX-30 adds knee airbags for the driver and front passenger, too.The only slight disappointment with the CX-30 is the powertrain lineup. Its a carbon copy of the Mazda3, meaning the 2.0-litre SkyActiv inline-four is standard, good for 155 horsepower and 150 lb.-ft. of torque. If thats not enough kick, Mazdas 2.5L four-banger is available, good for 186 horsepower and 186 lb.-ft. of torque. Both powertrains are hooked up to a six-speed automatic, and all-wheel-drive is available.Now, theres nothing inherently wrong with this powertrain lineup Mazdas G-Vectoring Control is standard fare, and the company has paid extra attention to quashing noise, vibration, and harshness, so you can bet itll ride well but youd think the CX-30 wouldve debuted for North America with Mazdas trick SkyActiv-X engine. When is it coming?The Mazda CX-30 is hitting U.S. dealers next month, followed by Canada in January. The CX-30 starts at $23,950 for a base, front-wheel-drive GX and tops out at $33,850 for the fully loaded GT.Should you buy it?Good question. The CX-30 is priced well, generously equipped, and the interior is impeccable. And given its a Mazda, you can bet itll be among the more engaging crossovers in the segment. If the CX-5 is too big, the CX-3 is too tight, and the Mazda3 hatch doesnt fit the bill, the CX-30 is just
Origin: 2020 Mazda CX-30 splits the difference between the CX-3 and CX-5
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The Fiat Abarth and the spaces in between
The range of products built by FCA has, generally, no real reason to exist at least, not in the minds of any practical car-buyer. Almost every vehicle from FCAs brands appear specifically made to fit in between the needs of most consumers.Teeny, sporty roadsters. Near-800-horsepower go-fast brutes. Rafts of off-road-capable Jeeps. Does anyone really need any of these cars to exist?No.Thats the simple answer. However, its within this unjustifiable existence we find something much more important: purpose. For some drivers, its not the destination we care about, its the space in between the start and the finish line.In life, its the space in between birth and death that we find meaning in. The Japanese have a word for this ikagai and since a Mazda MX-5s bones underpin the Fiat 124, I thought it prudent to mention here.Thats what FCA builds, vehicles that live in this space, I would argue. But to find out for sure, I headed to California with several other auto writers to spend some time in between the start and finish line of Laguna Seca race track in a few mildly updated Fiat Abarths.To make sure all of us journalists didnt crash and burn immediately, we were given a crash course in track driving from Skip Barber Driving School in Monterey, California. Fiat assumed most of us knew how to drive big mistake so we only got a fraction of a real lesson, just enough to get a bunch of lead-foot writers out on the track and, hopefully, not into too much trouble.Laguna Seca itself looks intimidating. From wild elevation changes to an infamous corkscrew left-right, its the quintessential classic race track, impossible to build today. Turns out it feels no more difficult than a back roads drive, albeit one at 160 km/h. The track is wide and so are the curves, which meant we could keep the loud pedal pressed to the floor for the most part. Both the 124 and 500 manuals and automatics we drove had been fitted with some mild upgrades to better power and agility. The 124 got a new Record Monza Exhaust, the 500 a set of straight pipes really just a muffler delete. Regardless, the sound of the 500 was raucous compared to the gentlemanly 124, at least until you let off the gas at 7,000 rpm in the latter. At that point, you might feel subliminally compelled to fork over $2 to the concession stand manager for extra butter.Step on the gas in the low revs and the torque or lack thereof will let you down, literally. On a track with such extreme elevation changes as Laguna Seca, you need low-end grunt for all but a few turns, and so want to keep the engine in a high rev range to let the turbo spin enough to propel you onward and upward.The 124 is not a new vehicle, but thats a compliment. The bloat of new sports cars really becomes apparent when you sit in a vehicle as small as this. The car hasnt been given the full race car treatment when it comes to suspension and brakes. The springs are still quite soft, though the Abarth package does add upgraded Brembo stoppers and a limited-slip differential. The centre-of-gravity is low, and the car feels well-balanced no surprises when you enter or exit a turn. Though the 124 and 500 share an engine, the experience could not be more different. Obviously, the hatchback is shorter and taller than the slender 124, and you feel it in every corner, especially at Laguna Seca where almost none are taken on flat ground. Pitch it into a turn and you lean like Pisa. The front wheels try desperately to keep you pointed in the right direction, but the weight transfer works against your favour. All you can do is apply a dab of brake, causing the car to rotate. In a few corners, my car mustve looked like it was going to take a piss on the apex.Apologies to the enthusiasts, but having a go in a manual-trans Fiat 500 around the track was pretty unpleasant. The shifter is floppy and the throws are long, and most of us journalists couldnt get into the seating position.As sacrilegious as it sounds, the automatic transmission in the 500 was splendid, and offered quicker gear changes than I could pull off with my right hand and left foot. The positioning of the shifter is perfect for snapping up and down the gears, and the short throws made it feel like a rally car.If youre asking me to hand in my enthusiast badge immediately, perhaps I can reel you back in by suggesting the automatic in the 124 did not offer the same feeling. Although it too can be manually shifted with the same blip of the gear lever or flick of the steering-wheel-mounted paddles, the slushbox was much slower to respond, and wouldnt downshift if you werent in the 11 or 12 oclock positions on the rev counter. This meant more time spent thinking about shifting than other things, tainting the experience slightly. OK, give me my badge back.The six-speed manual transmission in the 124 is borrowed from the previous-generation NC Miata, and offers an excellent notchy feel that doesnt care if you wring its
Origin: The Fiat Abarth and the spaces in between
Under the skin: The difference between regular and super unleaded fuel
When you pull into your local filling station, chances are there will be two types of petrol on offer: the cheaper premium grade and pricier super unleaded. So what’s your poison? Go for the super just because it sounds like a good idea, or be thrifty and stick with the premium? The most significant difference between the two is the research octane rating (RON) of the petrol. The octane rating tells you how resistant the fuel is to detonation, known as knocking or pinking. In a petrol engine, petrol is mixed with air, then it’s compressed and ignited by a spark. When that happens, the mixture burns outwards from the point of ignition like a grassland fire (but faster). The burn should be smooth and controlled, but if the mixture is compressed too much, random pockets of the mixture spontaneously detonate too early. It’s audible and can make a sound like dried lentils being poured into a tin can, or a diesel-like knocking noise. A key way of increasing a petrol engine’s performance is by raising the compression ratio, or in a turbocharged engine increasing the boost – or both. Either one increases pressure inside the combustion chamber when the fuel ignites. In older engines, the threshold at which detonation became a threat had to be carefully managed by engine designers and tuners, especially when turbos came along. Then back in 1982, Saab’s engine genius, Per Gillibrand (known as ‘Mr Turbo’), dreamed up Automatic Performance Control. APC listened for the onset of knock by using a microphone attached to the cylinder block – a knock sensor – and monitoring boost pressure and engine revs. Today petrol engines use similar anti-knock systems, but thanks to much faster processors in engine computers they can also use algorithms to predict when knock will occur. Naturally aspirated engines delay the point at which combustion is triggered (retarding the ignition) if knock threatens, all of which brings us back to the question of whether you need to fork out the extra dosh for super unleaded. The answer is, there’s only one real reason to and that is because your car has a high-performance engine or the handbook explicitly says you should use it. Using fuel of a higher octane than your engine needs or can benefit from won’t hurt it, only your wallet. The difference between premium and super unleaded these days is a maximum of two points (97 octane versus 99) and the chance of a modern engine being damaged by the lower of the two is nil. However, the engineers calibrating higher-performance engines and chasing the best performance numbers are likely to have done so using the highest-octane pump fuel available. The higher octane allows the engine to use a higher boost pressure and more aggressive settings to pump out a little more power. With the lower octane, it may back off those settings a tad to stay below the knock threshold. Whether you can notice the difference subjectively, though, is down to how attuned you are to your car. Worst case scenario Extreme cases of detonation can badly damage an engine. This cylinder head from a very highly tuned competition engine looks like it has been nibbled by rats. Rest easy, though, because there’s no chance of anything like this happening to a production car by choosing premium petrol over super unleaded at your local
Origin: Under the skin: The difference between regular and super unleaded fuel
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