Mazda SKYACTIV-Drive (FW6A-EL)

automatic · transverse · 2010–present

Also known as: skyactiv-drive, skyactiv drive, fw6a-el, fw6ax-el, fw6a el, mazda 6-speed automatic

Mazda's six-speed automatic — in the 2, 3, 6, MX-5, CX-3, CX-5, CX-30 and the large CX-60 and CX-90.

Its design point explains almost every complaint made about it. A conventional automatic drives through its torque converter and locks up only in the tall gears; this one locks up almost at once and stays locked across nearly the whole range, which is where its directness comes from and why owners often describe it as feeling like a dual-clutch.

That puts the lock-up clutch under load a conventional automatic never applies to it, so shudder arrives earlier in this gearbox's life than experience of other automatics would suggest — a fine vibration at light throttle around 40–70 km/h, easily read as a misfire, a wheel balance or a driveshaft. On this unit it is a fluid-condition symptom first and a mechanical one second, so a fluid service is a diagnostic step rather than a last resort.

And the fluid is specific. Mazda's FZ specification is not a universal ATF, and a gearbox filled with a multi-vehicle fluid will shudder whatever else is done to it.

Beyond that, the mechatronic valve body is the expensive failure, and it announces itself electrically — a gear refused, a limp mode, a code naming a solenoid — rather than by slipping.

It is not the SKYACTIV-MT. Mazda gave one name to a gearbox family, and a listing that says only SKYACTIV covers both an automatic and a manual that share nothing.

Cars fitted with this gearbox

17 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.

Mazda

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