Mazda MX-3: The Coupe That Housed America's Smallest Production V6
The MX-3 is a product of a specific, unrepeatable moment: Japanese automakers flush with bubble-economy cash, free to engineer things that made no commercial sense. Fitting a V6 into a subcompact coupe is exactly the kind of decision that only happens when accountants aren't running the room. It's worth understanding as a document of what Japanese engineering culture looked like at its most uninhibited, before the 1990s crash forced every manufacturer back to pragmatism. Cars like this don't get made because they're logical — they get made because someone had the budget and the nerve.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Japanese economy seemed unstoppable. Japanese real estate and stock prices surged, and automakers found themselves overflowing with cash. So, Japanese automakers