Cylinder-count matters.

As some will know, I've spent the last nine months smoking around in a 20 year old, flaky e39 520i.

what a prick

The exterior is questionable, the interior far from concourse, but what matters most, that silky smooth straight-six is a tuneful joy.

It's far from powerful, it left the factory with a claimed 150 horsepower and an even smaller torque figure. Plus, in SE spec, the chassis it's attached to was never meant to be a b-road destroyer.

Not that it isn't fun to drive, this is still *cough* an Ultimate Driving Machine. The most enjoyable part of stretching it's legs however, is exploring the higher numbers of the tachometer.

When you do get into the torque curve from about 3.5k it does start to get a move on and when you reach peak power at an admittedly silly 5.9k, it has a sweet rasp to the engine note. Not overtly loud, but enough to have allowed the company-car man back in the late 90s to let out a little giggle of joy.

My previous, flaky e39 (German Plates came with the purchase and were changed)

It's not my first straight-six, but the time spent with this one has only raised my lust for larger cylinder counts. Big displacement engines however, come with big tax bills.

VR6 engined Golfs and even 'M-Lite' BMWs come with annual tax bills in four figures. A worthy cost, if you can afford it, but I'm in the bangernomics marketplace, so it comes down to small capacity engines, hence why the 520i, with it's 1991cc, is just about acceptable.

Having just recently had the pleasure of driving the Ring of Kerry, my hunger for something a little more nimble and light on it's feet has increased.

Don't get me wrong, anything would be fun to blat around the Ring of Kerry and the Beemer held it's own and then some, but for some tighter sections, I wished for a moment, I was in something smaller and lighter.

What are my options? Few, very few to be honest. There are of course IS200s and similar age 3-Series to my 5, there's the Compact even. Worthy, but a bit too similar to what I'm already in; and although mass market machines, good ones are few and far between.

Then there is the curio I come here to speak of. The Mazda MX-3.

You've probably seen the odd MX-3 and completely disregarded it, through no fault, as the styling is as dull a ditch water. Also, there were never that many around, being a grey-import from Japan. How many are left in Ireland, if any, is open to debate.

Most, if not all that did come here, had either a 1.5 or 1.6 litre four-cylinder. However, there was a third choice from the factory. A V6. A 1.8-litre V6. Now we're talking.

I have no idea what this car and engine combo are like, but this is a car from the company that brings us the MX-5 let's remember, albeit the MX-3 is, ahem, front-wheel-drive.

The V6 isn't exactly a powerhouse either, 130 horsepower isn't much to write home about. It's not a heavy car though, 1200 kilos, driver-up, so the claimed dash to 60 of 8.5 seconds, is, fine. Probably.

It has enough curio-value, especially nowadays, for me to find out though. Finding one however, not so easy.

There is this one on eBay, which appears decent. I'm tempted to bid, but it's already not far from what I could realistically spend and there's still four days left on the auction. Plus, I don't know how easy; or if I want to import a car from the UK in the current climate.

OK, I know I'm just finding excuses not to do it. I would like to be able to try before I buy though, this is a 90s Mazda, there's more than a chance of catastrophic rust, so I want to be able to inspect.

So until we live in a pandemic free world, this mission will have to wait. Unless there's one on these shores....