The head unit has hard disc storage but this is so difficult to use it may as well not exist. The leather seats and trim are optional on the imported Atenza.

Leather seats, steering wheel, gear knob, handbrake lever.

The sunroof is unnecessary on a car like this in my opinion. There is a good level of equipment as standard: Interior equipment Copyright Ludolph Bass 2014. The chassis and suspension have been stiffened, and the brakes have been upgraded to cope with the extra power. The system has 3 driving modes, but you won’t get to choose them yourself – it does that for you. Up to half of the power is delivered to the rear wheels when required as determined by computation of speed, yaw, lateral G, steering angle etc. This means the car is essentially front wheel drive when there is enough traction. I’m pleased to report the car is only available with a 6 speed manual transmission, incorporating Mazda’s active torque split system. Torque is the same on both models at 380 Nm. Here we encounter the first advantage of importing one of these from Japan in the form of 12 extra horses: the engine has been detuned to 256 bhp on the European version of the car. The engine is a 2.3 litre turbocharged MZR 元-VDT unit producing 268 bhp. You also get more power! More of this later.Ībout the car: it’s a Mazda Atenza (Mazda 6) with plenty of performance enhancements.

This being the case, why bother importing one from Japan? There are a few common problems with these cars, which you may be able to avoid by importing from Japan. It was available new in the UK from 2006 to 2007. I love the fact that until you start driving, nothing about it shouts “I’m a performance car!” The subtle bonnet bulge and twin exhausts being the only exterior clues. Traffic light Grands Prix challengers will enjoy a lot of success in this car, although they really aren’t the target audience.

You may have encountered the MPS badge elsewhere on the slightly more brash Mazda 3 MPS (Mazdaspeed Axela in Japan). Mazdaspeed is Mazda’s in house tuning division and MPS stands for Mazda Performance Series. The owner of the car pictured here described it as ‘exquisitely underrated’ and having driven it I agree entirely.

The Mazdaspeed Atenza / Mazda 6 MPS is the high performance saloon that (almost) no one knows about.

Mazdaspeed 6 performance parts