Isle of Sky

IT WAS AN OFFER WE COULDN’T REFUSE: A SCOTTISH ROAD TRIP TO CHECK UNDER THE SPORRAN OF MAZDA’S SKYACTIV-X ENGINE HEADING OUR WAY

- STEPHEN CORBY

I WAS ALWAYS FAIRLY SURE that Alastair Doak, Mazda’s marketing director in Australia, hates me, but the enormity of the enmity is a surprise. Only someone with a deep dislike of you would force you to dress up like a walrus and then throw you into the frigid and frankly frightening waters of the North Atlantic Ocean off Scotland’s icy Isle of Skye.

Alastair – who wears his Scottish heritage with every elongated vowel and gnurled “r” sound, and an inability to use the word “small” instead of “wee” – swears that I will love the ‘coasteering’ adventure he’s taking me on as part of our Mazda 3 Isle of SkyActiv-X drive, but I know the truth.

The fact is he has never forgiven me for the day, way back in 2002, when I, imperilled by the impetuosity of youth, ruined the Very Important Mazda RX-8 initial launch drive in Japan for everyone, and embarrassed him personally as the Australian PR man, by spinning out, ever so slightly, during our track-based test, and causing the Japanese to shut the whole day down.

As I crept out of the barely damaged car in the pits, the pointedly polite Japanese asked me if I was okay, and whether I would like a drink. When I suggested arsenic, I swear Doak started trying to source some.

Years later, when I hear Doak has suggested the two of us take this trip across Scotland, putting Mazda’s miserly new fuel technology to the test in the home of long pockets and short arms, I know what is coming: revenge.

While I assume he wants to punish me with Scottish weather – also known as water torture – and possibly whisky drinking, an activity I would put in a dead heat with effluent gargling, he has other surprises in mind.