MAZDA 6 MPS

NOT EVERY Japanese performance sedan was off-its-head lairy in the Noughties, you know.

Plenty were, of course. By 2006, endless iterations of Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution and Subaru’s Impreza Turbo were upping the aesthetic and performance ante to the point where it was all getting a bit silly.

Mazda sensed that there might be some money to be made in the gap between fast company car and in-your-face rally contender, so the Mazda Performance Series (MPS) was born.

Despite a competitive price tag, rust and unsympathetic tuning decimated 6 MPS numbers in markets like the UK, but both it and its