If there’s one thing the Mazda MX-5 Miata has lacked over its four-decade career, it’s power. With the exception of some limited edition models that peaked at around 200 hp, the small roadster has never offered high-power engines.
To be fair, the current Mazda MX-5‘s 181-hp 2.0-liter naturally aspirated gas engine is more than enough for a car that weighs 2,366 pounds, but some Miata fans wouldn’t mind having over 200 horsepower in their cars.
Well, what do you know, Mazda has been perfectly aware of that for a long time, and at one point some of its engineers actively explored the possibility of shoehorning a V6 engine into the Miata’s engine bay.
Engineers Built a Miata V6 Prototype in Secret
Mazda’s head of research and development in Europe, Christian Schultze, told Dutch magazine AutoRAI in an interview that several company engineers built a secret V6-powered Miata prototype around two decades ago.
As it turns out, the project wasn’t an official one; instead, the said engineers took it upon themselves to cram a 2.5-liter V6 engine into the Miata, and they did that quietly after hours. That sounds surprisingly similar to how the original VW Golf GTI came to be, but unlike the GTI, which went on to become a global legend, the Miata V6 never made it to showrooms.
The main reason was, as you can imagine, packaging. In order to fit, the six-cylinder engine had to be mounted higher than the regular four-cylinder, and that ruined the Miata’s aesthetics. While it didn’t convince in the looks department, the one-off prototype was “definitely interesting” to drive, Schultz revealed.
That said, it was probably not interesting enough to warrant a production version, as stuffing a heavier V6 engine in the engine bay of the featherweight Miata likely upset its perfect weight distribution, making it nose heavy. Now, had Mazda really wanted to build a V6 Miata, it would have done it, but modifying the roadster likely required too much work and didn’t make economic sense.
What Might Have Been
That’s too bad, because a six-cylinder Miata would have been a special thing. The Mazda exec did not reveal which V6 engine was mounted on the MX-5 prototype, but given the 2.5-liter displacement, it was probably a K-series unit. The KL-ZE engine made up to 200 hp and 165 lb-ft of torque in the larger Mazda MX-6 coupe offered exclusively in the Japanese market until 1997, making this particular V6 a terrific choice for the tiny MX-5.
Since Schultz mentioned that the Miata V6 experiment took place 20 years ago, that probably means the larger engine was fitted to the then freshly launched 2006 Miata. That would make sense because the NC generation had a larger body, providing more room in the engine bay for the V6.
At the time, the NC Miata packed 170 horsepower and 140 lb-ft of torque from the MZR 2.0-liter four-cylinder naturally aspirated engine, which means that the V6 would have added a healthy supplement of 30 hp and 25 lb-ft of torque.
While the Miata V6 never came to be, Mazda did offer some powerful special edition models over the years, including the Japan-only Spirit Racing Roadster 12R developed by the automaker’s racing division. Limited to 200 units that sold out in record time, this special MX-5 features an upgraded naturally aspirated 2.0-liter engine that produces 197 hp, making it the most powerful factory MX-5 Miata yet.
