Next-gen Mazdaspeed 3 to adopt all-wheel drive – report

A new report from Australia indicates that the next-gen Mazdaspeed3 (aka Mazda3 MPS) will get an all-wheel drive arrangement.

It appears that arrangement has been adopted by the company to fight the Volkswagen Golf VII R and other such classic models in this class such as the fresh Mercedes-Benz CLA 45 AMG. The car’s deputy program manager Takeo Mariuchi states that the new generation of the Mazda3 will use the same platform as the CX-5 which means it can receive an all-wheel drive variant. He further stated that from a technical point of view it was not difficult to install a four-wheel-drive system.

While the previous Mazda3 MPS comes equipped with a 2.3-liter turbo engine outputting 263 hp, the power was sent only to the front axle which resulted in a considerable amount of torque steer. But if the car will receive all-wheel drive, not only will it have more traction but we can expect the car’s engineers to add even more power.

Earlier this year we heard rumors about a possible reveal of Mazda3 in December but the information has not been confirmed yet by the officials of the company.