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- 2023 CX-5 Premium; 2018 Mazda 3 GT hatch
Mark Vaughn published an article in this week's Autoweek (http://www.autoweek.com/article/20140526/CARNEWS/140519817) in which he gave a brief recap of the career of Dave Coleman, who holds the enviable position of head of "Product Excellence" at Mazda. Of particular interest are his comments about CX-5 suspension development towards the end of the article. The article raised a couple of questions for me, so I shot off an email to Mark and he recontacted Dave Coleman and responded with a very interesting and complete answer. What follows is the text of our exchange:
Hi Mark:
Just read your recent article on Dave Coleman of Mazda and have a question about his comments on CX-5 handling. Did you understand him to mean that the changes he suggested were made before the CX-5 went into production in 2012 or that these were running changes made sometime after the vehicle was introduced? Reason I ask is because there have been rumors on the internet lately that some changes have been made to the car's suspension in the last six months or so. Thanks.
Here's what Dave just said:
Have no fear, that particular adventure was early in development when we were just driving mechanical prototypes. Handling was so good by the time we hit production that we actually introduced the thing at Mazda Raceway (you know I have to, Mark...) Though it seemed like a ridiculous place to show off an SUV, the CX-5's lap times were actually better than the contemporary Mazda3 with the same engine in it!
Your reader heard right, though. We did make some recent running changes to the suspension tuning to maintain the handling when the body stiffness changed due to some tweaks to the body structure for the new offset frontal crash test (the test was introduced after we started building the car or else we would have done this from the start.
Thought many of you would enjoy this little insight into the historical and ongoing development of our cars.
Hi Mark:
Just read your recent article on Dave Coleman of Mazda and have a question about his comments on CX-5 handling. Did you understand him to mean that the changes he suggested were made before the CX-5 went into production in 2012 or that these were running changes made sometime after the vehicle was introduced? Reason I ask is because there have been rumors on the internet lately that some changes have been made to the car's suspension in the last six months or so. Thanks.
Here's what Dave just said:
Have no fear, that particular adventure was early in development when we were just driving mechanical prototypes. Handling was so good by the time we hit production that we actually introduced the thing at Mazda Raceway (you know I have to, Mark...) Though it seemed like a ridiculous place to show off an SUV, the CX-5's lap times were actually better than the contemporary Mazda3 with the same engine in it!
Your reader heard right, though. We did make some recent running changes to the suspension tuning to maintain the handling when the body stiffness changed due to some tweaks to the body structure for the new offset frontal crash test (the test was introduced after we started building the car or else we would have done this from the start.
Thought many of you would enjoy this little insight into the historical and ongoing development of our cars.
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