wow....a reliable Fiat lol

 

Remember, though..........unlike its Miata twin, it will have a Fiat-sourced MultiAir engine.

 

I don't believe Mazda would accept just "any" engine. It has to pass their standard.

 

Mazda had only half the say, though. Remember, this car was jointly developed. And Fiat, right now, has a lot more money and resources than Mazda.

 

Jointly developed is a fancy way of saying, Fiat dumping a bunch of money on Mazda. I remember, one of the Mazda engineers said in an article that everything about 124 is designed by Mazda and get signed off by Fiat. What actually happened was that Fiat want the car to be modeled as modern 124 and use Multi-Air engine. Mazda materialized the idea.

Even though it has Multiair engine, it's still manufactured by Mazda, it has to follow Mazda manufacturing standard and quality control parameters. Mazda is putting their reputation on the line here building the car for Fiat.

 

Yes, I agree that it is not surprising that, if reliability was going to be an issue, then Fiat would sit back and let Mazda do most of the work. But Mazda, as usual, didn't give the new Miata a lot of torque.....only 148 ft-lbs (though the short gearing in the transmission helps). Fiat apparently felt the need for at least a little more power on their version......so it gets an Italian-sourced engine with 183 ft-lbs.

 

Rumor has it though the 124 will also get a hotter 1.7 turbo 4 with 240hp sourced from the Alfa Romeo 4C.

Would love to see a Mazdaspeed version this time around.

 

Yup, they can turbo the 2.0L and share it with Mazdaspeed CX-3. They are going to sell a lot of MS CX-3.

 

 

wow that looks pretty freaking awesome. good job fiat!

 

A number of people (including myself) were ticked off at the D.C. auto show in late January. Fiat could have easily brought one to that show (it had already been displayed at L.A. and Detroit) but, for no sensible or credible reason, didn't. The (obviously embarrassed) Fiat reps just stood there and apologized.

 

Seriously!?!?!?!?!?!?

This from a brand that has 2 model lines, the 500 and 500c, both of which don't sell in jack diddly squat numbers in this country. You'd think they'd be over the moon with any new product being sold in the usa.