Here's a fun game you can play with your non-car enthusiast friends of yours: Play a round of Word Association, throw out the Mazda name and see how many people give an answer that's not either the Mazda 3 or Miata. And that's a shame because Mazda has quite an interesting line up right now, which most people are quite unaware of. I'm pretty sure even my own parents wouldn't be able to name a Mazda model that isn't one of the two aforementioned cars, though I'm certain they'd find some way to reference my old MX-6 that burnt down years ago.
And, oddly enough, it was that very MX-6 that made me decide to try out the new Mazda6. After all, that old car was based on the 626 and that, really, is just an older version of the current 6. I realize it's a slightly convoluted way of thinking, but it made sense in my mind at the time. Regardless of whether my logic was sound or if I merely had a momentary lapse of judgement, I had soon found myself behind the wheel of a 2016 Mazda 6 GT.
(Disclaimer: I asked Mazda if I could drive one of their cars and they gave me a list of options to choose from. Seeing as the ND Miata wasn't on that list at the time, I opted to try something that I figured would best pertain to the RS crowd. Then, when I was told they couldn't supply an Eunos or museum kept FC RX-7, I settled for the new 6. You've won this time, Mazda...) 
The Mazda 6 is the mid-size sedan that's on no one's radar. In August of this year alone, Honda sold just under 41,000 Accords, while Toyota managed to move 37,500 Camry's. Compare this to the 5400 Mazda 6's and you start to see the problem. Actually, it gets even worse for Mazda. The Chevy Malibu (17,500), the Chrysler 200 (14,000), the Kia Optima (13,980) AND the god awful Americanized VW Passat (7400) all sold more models than the Mazda 6. And why is that? Is the Mazda 6 simply a bad car in general? Is it the lack of advertising or brand awareness? Is it priced too far away from its main competition? Well follow me through my week-long journey as I attempted to find the (or any, really) answer.
EXTERIOR (9/10)
The Mazda 6 is a handsome beast. The combination of Mazda's new corporate grill and the headlights make a front end that few manufacturers can beat, regardless of price point. What looks slightly out of place on the far more popular Mazda 3 instead feels instantly at home on the 6. And damn if it doesn't look menacing, especially at night. New for 2016, if you option your car with the LED headlights, you also get a unique LED strip that runs from the headlights and down around the entire grill. Oddly enough, it doesn't look at all out of place or like it was a Princess Auto special that was installed by a 17 year old after a couple of beers snuck out of Dad's bar fridge. No, it matches the overall style perfectly and now every time I see one on the road without the strip I feel like it doesn't look right.
Moving onto the rest of the body, it had angles and creases in all the right spots. Sure, it was still a little generic and was an obvious succession on the previous model, but the designers somehow just managed to get everything right. That said, I would stay away from the colour my test car had (Sonic Silver) and instead go for the Soul Red or Jet Black. Those two colours complement the car design far better than a light colour ever could.
Completing the exterior, the car sat on gunmetal coloured 19" rims, which are stock for the GT trim. Being an OEM split spoke style, they were disappointingly generic looking. They did manage to balance the overall design of the car, but I would have liked to see a slightly bolder design choice.
INTERIOR (8/10)
2016 introduced a redesigned cabin for the 6. Gone is the already dated looking, plastic heavy interior and, in its place, is a far nicer place to sit. The interior of my tester was adorned in soft touch plastics and supple leather. Yes, the non-motorized touch screen now sticks out from the top of the dash like a sore thumb (seriously, manufacturers, why do you all insist on this design style? Stop it!) but the rest feels well thought out. The driver also gets a different take on a HUD. Instead of the conventional method of projecting information directly onto the windshield, Mazda uses a motorized piece that sits atop the gauge cluster to house whatever information the car thinks is pertinent at the time. It's a neat looking thing, especially when you watch it rise and fall as the car turns on and off, but I would still prefer it to be in the more traditional location.
The HVAC controls have a more natural layout and the steering wheel is nice and chunky. The paddle shifters fall easily to your fingertips as well. Everything you touch feels solid and reliable. The front seats were comfortable and didn't leave me feeling weary after a long drive. Rear passengers were also afforded ample space, even with the driver's seat pushed all the way back. Due to the roofline sloping back, however, it may give backseat passengers a slight feeling of claustrophobia.
TECH/SAFETY (7/10)
The 6 comes standard with a plethora of gadgets that were once only available on the S-Class. On the safety equipment side, it has ABS, traction and stability control, front seat side airbags, full length curtain airbags, and active front head restraints. You also get a rear view camera, automatic emergency notification, rear parking sensors, blind spot and cross-traffic monitoring. The GT Tech package also includes a forward collision warning, auto braking, and a lane departure warning.
It can also be equipped with an 11 speaker Bose stereo, LED headlights/taillights, automatic wipers, automatic high beams, and a system called i-ELOOP (an energy capture system that, when braking, will store energy in a capacitor that can then be used to power things like a/c, lighting while the car is in "stop mode" at a light.
Unfortunately this is where the car starts to lose points. After a few days, I found myself deactivating most of the automatic functions and instead leaving it in manual mode. The automatic wipers would turn themselves onto full blast if it detected a slight amount of mist on the window, yet during a genuine downpour they would either not turn on or would set itself to the slowest intermittent mode possible. The automatic high beams were also a big problem. One night at around 3am, I took an out of town co-worker for a late night tour of Vancouver. We ended up driving through Stanley Park and, since there aren't street lights in the forested areas, I wanted to try out the automatic high beams. However, try as I might, they barely worked. I went through entire blacked out areas of the park without them turning on, only to have them fire up in better lit areas. It also seemed to detect light bouncing back from puddles (or something, anyway) because they would be working fine for a few seconds, then suddenly turn themselves off. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It unfortunately got to the point where I finally had to park the car and turn the auto mode off. Hopefully it's just a firmware issue that can be easily fixed. Another issue, though minor, is that the heated seats never truly got warm. Some seat warmers will toast your balls if you're not careful, but even at full blast these would have trouble even melting an ice cube. Minor, I know, but if you're someone who lives in the snow belt, one thing you absolutely need inside your leather seats are seat warmers that will actually work. There were a couple of other downfalls, but I'll go into them in their appropriate sections.
That said, all the safety features I was able to test seemed to work flawlessly. The blind spot mode was actually quite fantastic, at least in the sense that even if there wasn't a car in your actual blind spot but instead coming up quick in the lane beside you, it would sense it and warn you. I'm normally not one to advocate safety technology over common sense while driving, but this is one piece of tech that I could get behind.
DRIVETRAIN (6/10)
All trims are available with only one engine, the 2.5L Skyactiv-G. It runs a compression rate of 13:1 and only requires 87 octane when visiting the pump. The official numbers are 184hp at 5700rpm and 185tq at 3250rpm.
Surprisingly for this segment, the 6 is actually available with a six speed row-your-own-gears mode. Unfortunately, if you want the tech package, you're stuck with an automatic that also has six gears.
The automatic transmission does its best to keep rpm's in the right area, especially in sport mode, but it's hampered by the sole engine choice of the car. When you're the only occupant in the car, the available power is sufficient. However, once you start loading the car down with passengers and luggage, that power is suddenly nowhere near what's needed. It starts to feel anemic and wheezy. For a car that feels quite comfortable and sporty 90% of the time, the power just isn't enough to deliver on what the rest of the car promises.
Speaking of sporty, the suspension manages to ride that fine line between comfort and sporty without falling to one extreme or another. It's nowhere near the comfort of a Rolls Royce, nor the spine shattering ride of a stanced Volkswagen, but it gives you the confidence that you can chuck the car into a corner at speed and not worry about the door handle touching the pavement. The chassis is very well balanced and a genuine pleasure to throw around. It's just sorely hampered by that engine.
SOUND (6/10)
The 11-speaker Bose stereo seemed to match some of the other issues with the car in the sense that it sounds good on paper, but reality kind of kicked its ass. The high and mids were clear and crisp, but it suffered greatly at the low range sound. You also had to turn the sound up quite high before you've got an acceptable level. It was a little odd, like an amplifier wasn't installed on the production line or something. I've never been a fan of Bose and this particular system clearly isn't one of their best offerings.
On the quiet side of things, the cabin stayed nice and quiet. Mazda seemed to put their sound deadening in all the proper spots as even at highway speeds the cabin was sufficiently quiet. Wind buffeting was kept to a minimum, even when the windows were down.
CONCLUSION (35/50)
The Mazda 6 is an interesting car. It's the option less picked, yet offers better bang for the buck than it's more traditional rivals. It's a solid, sporty car with some good technology packed into it, but is unfortunately let down by a couple of minor quirks and an engine that's not quite up to Mazda's "Zoom Zoom" slogan. If you're tired of having to choose between the Accord and Camry, yet don't want to commit to an SUV or van, then take a look at the 6. Yes, it has its problems, but it's still worth a look. And considering its looks, you would be doing the world a favour by bringing one more of these handsome beasts onto the road with you. At the very least, it will give the poor guy stuck in traffic beside you something nice to look at.
The new Mazda 6 starts at $26,525.
As tested, $34,715.
You can read my Acura TLX review
here, or my Civic Touring review
here.
Coming soon, the 2016 Volvo XC90 and a second stab at the Acura TLX.
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