New straight six from Mazda

Because most car and SUV buyers don't want an engine that intrudes into the cabin, or a long hood.
There are solutions. The staggered cylinder bores is one, and the Hurricane’s block is another, with even the cylinder sleeves taken out. The slant six was borne of the need to cut length; the slant made room for the (now obsolete) distributor and such. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't a height issue, Willem Weertman made it clear they'd only had room for a four cylinder. FOrtunately slanting the new straight six engine, by allowing for side-mounted distributor and such, was about that length.)

I think the engineers at Dodge used the GM v6 as proof that they could make one out of the 318...

There have been a lot of stories made up by the marketing people about the slant six, I'm going with Bill Weertman's since he was there...! There were side benefits for sure but not enough to slant the Aussie six.

68RT said:

It was so easy to pull, I always did that and bench set the points. Used a long extension to pull the retaining bolt and coil was easy access to disconnect the wire.

Click to expand...

That's a good tip, I need to lubricate mine and change the rotor, most likely.

Ouch.