Station wagons weren't always considered hopelessly lame and unmarketable. They're certainly cool enough for Car & Driver's legendary Boss Wagon project series, for example. Seems that the magazine's editors would pick an otherwise sedate station wagon or van and then crossbreed it with a sportier sibling to produce, well, the kind of boss wagon that the manufacturers could have produced themselves, if they only had the stones.
Sounds like a lot of thought-provoking, gearheady fun. Which is obviously why the magazine has bailed on it for the last thirty years. The latest one I can find, Boss Wagon III, was a tweaked out mashup of a Volvo 240 wagon and the Volvo 242GT, and that was in 1977. Now they're transplanting the guts of a wrecked Mazdaspeed 3 into a Mazda 5, but it's only Boss Wagon VI. It just don't add up!
C/D Boss Wagon VI Mazdaspeed 5 Contest via dt minivan correspondent jj daddy-o]
That Volvo 242 Boss Wagon evokes fond memories in one station wagon-loving autowriter [automobilemag.com]
So...they're taking the 2.3 out of a Mazda5 and replacing it with the 2.3-liter turbo from the 'Speed3? What unbridled ambition.
They are replacing a 153 horsepower engine with a 263HP engine and a 6-speed. Plus better suspension bits.
I'd take a 72% increase in horsepower in my car.
I originally meant the "3 Boss Wagons in 31 years" doesn't add up, but since then, I've been wondering why they don't use the Mazdaspeed6 instead. Or is it half dozen of one, since the 3 and 6 use the same engine, but the 6 is AWD?
They should take the AWD system found in the Mazdaspeed 6 and CX-7 and use the 274HP motor straight from the Mazdaspeed 6 instead of the 263HP motor in the Mazdaspeed 3. With the required suspension and engine upgrades this new micro mini-van would be a true Mazdaspeed 5 and will love to see it blow the doors off a Subaru Impreza WRX hatchback and the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart. :)
zoom-zoom forever.