For a certified car freak living in the City of Angels, the drive to Las Vegas is a special treat. Sure, LA is only a traffic jam or three away from the kind of twisting coastal tarmac that ad makers and throttle jockeys adore. But the two hundred seventy-five mile haul across Interstate 15 to Sin City tells you everything you need to know about a car’s capacity for long distance love. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. My tale began when my friend and I jumped into the hairy knuckled Mazda Speed6 and set off for a suite at Caesar's Palace.
The Speed6 Grand Touring is the opposite of a Q-car. It’s deeply, strangely, and tragically ugly, or, if you prefer, bold, brash and muscular. Mazda's performance specialists fitted the beast with an air-to-air intercooler mounted WRX-style on top of the engine (fed through a pipe instead of a hood scoop). To accommodate the extra oomph, the designers creased the hood and raised it by four inches. The dolphin skull look-a-like signals the Mazda’s incipient roid rage. The double-sized gaping mouth fitted below the grill adds to the effect, threatening to swallow Mazda3's whole.
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