Hi there!
My name is Shady and I live in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I have two Mazda 6's: The white ATX is my daily driver and the gold MTX is my fun car. Both cars have the same 2.3L I4 MZR, the same as the "i" engines in the US. They are completely stock, but after some time, having suffered too many damaged rims because of Jeddah's poor roads, I changed the OEM 17" wheels and tires to 16" OEM aftermarket replicas. For a brief time, I ran with Bridgestone Potenza GIII 225/50R16 tires which, despite providing a smoother ride and excellent performance and handling (as opposed to the poor original-equipment Potenza 050), seemed to have quality problems. All four sets I bought (that's 16 tires!) had vibration and pulling problems that could never be sorted out. I did go back to running 17"s for more than a year on both cars, but since OE wheels are very expensive at the Haji Husain Alireza dealership, I had to run on cheap Chinese-made rims, which had variable quality and sometimes would never balance perfectly. As of May 2008, I'm running Toyo Proxes CT01, 215/55R16, on both cars. This is smoother still, and the non-directional tread pattern facilitates swapping the tires on both sides if need be, instead of being confined to one side. So far, so good.

Here are some recent pictures I took on the way to Riyadh on March 24, 2007:

... and on the way back on March 27:

So which color do you think is nicer?

And the rims?
These are the wheels and tires I'm talking about. Much better suited for daily use, as the original 215/45R17 tires are too hard and noisy, and being so low-profile, the wheels are susceptible to much bending and scoffing.

For a while I used these no-name rims and a set of cheap Marshal Matrac tires. You're excused for not having ever heard of them - they were the cheapest tires on the market. What I got is exactly what I paid for: lots of noise and not much grip. they sounded as if there was a bumblebee nest in the trunk and understeer was the order of the day. I ended up throwing them away after a month.

It's the same story with the wheels. Apart from being heavy, at +40 offset they rubbed badly at the rear fenders. The aluminum caps were secured by screwing them onto a plastic press-on hub with a plastic nut. The hub broke easily (surprise!) and I ended up having to replace it every week or so. Ya gets what ya pays for!

666, the Number of the Beast!

My accident, April 6, 2007:

Here are some shots on my way back from Riyadh on July 1, 2007:

A few fun shots on the way to Jordan, July 18, 2007:

Some lateral thinking with wheels:

Yes, believe your eyes. What you see here are wheels originally meant for the venerable Ford Crown Victoria. I stumbled upon these while I was hunting for replacements for the 17" Chinese knockoffs (see photos of the golden car by the rundown building, above). To my pleasant surprise, Crown Vic wheels have the same bolt patterns, dimensions and, most importantly, offset as the OE wheels (54mm vs. 55). The only difference was the center bore (70.6mm for the Crown Vic vs. 67.1mm for the 6). So I simply had the shop machine hubcentric rings to fit snugly on the rims, and the rest, as they say, was history.

In case you're wondering, I ran Kumho Exta Supra 712, 215/50R17 on one car (they're already half-worn) and Hankook Ventus K104 on the other. I have an extra set of K104s lying around at home, mounted on the only four good rims from the many sets I had before. Like I said in the lead paragraph, now I'm running the Toyos on 16" rims that look pretty much the same as these 17"s.

Spoiler installed on MTX

My new ride

This is my latest 6, a 2009, 2nd-gen, JDM 6, 2.5 with a six-speed MTX. Despite my best efforts to avoid black, it was the only color available with an MTX at the time. Even if I waited, the dealer told me, there was no guarantee that they would ever import MTXs again because of low demand.

Those are not the original wheels. The OE wheels are 18s, but I bought these 16s to be able to use bigger tires (I've had a lot of grief with bent rims with my previous rides.) However, the OE 18s are back on the car now, because the 16s and the big tires wreaked havoc on the handling.

(This ride will have its own page soon.)