FOXY wrote:
This week we can all see the TG review of the 6MPS on Dave again. Just seen it at 8.00pm. It gets repeated lots over the next few days.
If you haven't seen it you really must.
When I first saw the TG film I was considering buying the ST220 (very fine car) but this was the first I'd heard of a 6 MPS and this was the car made for me. I'd driven a 1.8 6 and thought it a good car but woefully under-powered. Then I had a go in a 2 litre (both of these over a couple of weeks) and thought it could still do with a bit extra. If you're on those continental motorways with the steep hills you don't want to have to change down to maintain a decent speed. Someone at Mazda obviously had the same idea.
And when you get off the motorway and want to make rapid progress round the mountain roads . . . AWD. Brilliant!
The TG film is a bit misleading I think in that Clarkson (who drives the MPS like an adolescent, of course) makes out that the Vauxhall is quicker in a straight line. Well, that's how it looks at the chequered flag, and even may have been, but as the cars pass the parked Jumbo Jet the Mazda is in front by a bonnet length. We don't get to hear where the flag was. I suppose we're meant to assume 1/4 mile. Even then the Vectra is only just ahead.
I suspect that Clarkson is also wildly unfair about the Vectra's understeer and drove to exaggerate its effects rather than to minimise them. I'd like to have seen the Stig take each of the cars round the circuit in a more honest appraisal of each.
Please read this post with regard to the closing of the Pure-MPS forums. 
