Mazda is a lot less involved with Ford than it used to be. And the implication with these "It's a Mazda engine" comments I think is that Ford isn't smart enough to make it themselves. The Ecoboost 6 proves this wrong.

I'm sure the Ecoboost 4 will be tuned for more economy than the Mazda engine as well.

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It's another attempt to discount Ford's engineering capabilities, like the claim that Ford had merely licensed Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive for the Escape, when in fact they had developed their system independently, then signed cross-licensing agreements with Toyota. Just another lazy journalist who couldn't be bothered to do the proper research.

And John Neff, the posting engine still sucks. I had to post this one twice.

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First off, an engine family is an engine family, and is worked on by a pool of engineers at a corporate level. The engineers don't wear giant ford-script badges, and giant Mazda flying-M bird logos, and duke it out.

Advancement in the tech is good. I welcome it, I happen to like mazda's product line, or at least potential for a product line, based on their Miata/RX8 chassis, more than Ford, which has only the Mustang for RWD chassis right now.

But if the new top end is being developed, it will probably be used corporate-wide, not lorded by one brand over the other, especially if the DFI components are less expensive, and it can save Mazda some money over the current hardware.

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My other half is a former Ford employee, with roots back in Dearborn. Having many years dealing with import operations and product development, I can attest to the fact that there was a lot of shared development with Mazda. That said it was a two way street (where do you think Mazda V-6 engines came from). Even with that being the case, each company would take a core product and re-engineer it to conform to their specs.

I doubt this will end up in any Mazda product in the near future. They can't even get hybrid powertrains from Ford.

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@boxerfanatic: Try the "go fast" variants of the Falcon here in Australia

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From Mazda's website:
"Valve train - 4 valves per cylinder, mechanical lifters, camshaft chain, Variable-Valve timing"

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Oh, and as for the premium fuel requirement, that is only on the Mazdaspeed3. That same engine in the CX-7 can be run on regular unleaded, the MS3 is a performance application so they tune it as such.

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"...for each of the intake and exhaust cams"?

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Shame on Autoblog :-)

The 2.3 liter engine uses Sequential Valve Timing, which is Mazda's moniker for the variable valve timing. My 1.6 liter Mazda 3, has SVT as well and the variable length intake manifold on top of that, as other Mazda's engines do.

For the record, most of four-pots Duratecs are essentially rebadged Mazda MZRs, such as the 2.5 liter engine in the Fusion, 1.4, 1.6 and a 2.0 liter in the Euro Focus and other models. What I really hate when British motoring journalists, most of whom treat Ford Focus as a British car...., write sentences like this: Mazda 3 will be built on "future" Ford Focus platform, or Mazda 2 will utilize "future" Ford Fiesta platform, instead of simply telling ye olde Blighty that Focus will drive on what Mazda built.

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"What I really hate when British motoring journalists, most of whom treat Ford Focus as a British car...., write sentences like this: Mazda 3 will be built on "future" Ford Focus platform, "

well, uh, they happen to be right, more or less. The 3 is on the C1 platform, the design of which was led by Ford of Europe with significant collaboration from Mazda and Volvo.

"instead of simply telling ye olde Blighty that Focus will drive on what Mazda built."

They don't tell them that because it would be wrong.

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You shouldn't, but it is Amercan engineering vs. Japanese engineering after all. People like to talk crap about how Americans don't know how to do anything right. The same thing is going on to some extent with the World Engines from Hyundai, Mitsubishi and Chrysler. All three companies have worked together since the 70's, so it doesn't really matter who gets credit for taking the lead in the design role, which was Hyundai this time around. Ford and Mazda go back a long way too.

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"You shouldn't, but it is Amercan engineering vs. Japanese engineering after all. People like to talk crap about how Americans don't know how to do anything right. "

that's just it. The problems that the Detroit 3 have had aren't generally engineering failures; they're failures on the part of management. We have plenty of top-notch engineering talent in the domestic auto industry, but that is all for naught once some air-head middle manager orders an ill-advised cost reduction just to pad profit by 50 cents a car- 'course the resulting warranty disaster won't be his problem, it'll be the next guy's problem.

the only reason the general public thinks that this is a problem with american engineers is because the general public doesn't have clue #1 what engineering actually is.

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Bman,

Are you kidding me? German car magazines and industrial quality audit bodies such as TUV put Mazda on top of their reliability studies and you write about Mazda's engine not passing Ford's "more rigorous durability requirements"?

Euro Fusion, Fiesta and Focus are good cars because of their Mazda's heritage. Glorified Focus ST uses Volvo's 5-pot engine, BTW.....

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kitko, he's telling the truth. mazda is not particularly well known for durability testing.

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Kitko,

Do you have proof proving that it didn't pass Ford's testing.

I also don't understand what you meant when you listed the cars above and mentioned that they are good cars because of Mazda's heritage. Not sure about the Euro Fusion, but the Focus and Fiesta were pretty good cars b4 they migrated over to shared platforms.

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"Euro Fusion, Fiesta and Focus are good cars because of their Mazda's heritage."

Wrong.

"Glorified Focus ST uses Volvo's 5-pot engine, BTW...."

So?

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