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Sometimes conversations in our office can get bizarre. Take the subject at hand, a hot-rod minivan. Maybe it was a slow news day, but the topic came up because the Mazda 5 is an appealing small van—a minivan in the purest sense—and more fun to drive than pretty much anything else with sliding side doors.

However, driving excitement is hard to appreciate when it’s tempered by an anemic power-to-weight ratio. Even though the Mazda 5 weighs 3358 pounds—that’s pretty mini as far as vans go—its 153-hp, 2.3-liter four doesn’t produce acceleration blisters when asked to propel that much mass.

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