Mazda 6

It’s pretty much impossible to talk about car design without sounding pretentious. This is probably the main reason professional car designers tend to wear turtleneck sweaters and space-age eyewear and jackets with too many buttons (or, occasionally, none at all); a uniform of mild ridiculousness to match this vocation of affected divination. So when Mazda tells us that the 6’s “Kodo” design language represents the muscular beauty of an animal pouncing, or that it takes its inspiration from the living athletic forms of nature, our first instinct—if we can manage not to snicker—is to smile and nod politely. Yes. Sure. It’s a fine-looking car—can we leave it at that?



But bullshit aside, Mazda has done it. The 6 is that rare beast, a car that looks like it drives and drives like it looks: taut, agile, and, yes, athletic. In a world where car design is often nothing more than bending metal around a set of platform-derived hard points and then thinking up some zingy metaphors, the 6 stands out as the real thing. All the more impressive is that Mazda has pulled off the form-and-function double with a mid-size sedan.

The reason the 6 looks lean and lithe is, obviously enough, because it is. This iteration is more than 200 pounds lighter than its predecessor, and that savings has been made without recourse to carbon fiber or pixie dust, which would have inflated its price tag well beyond its current position of almost outrageous affordability. Those shaved pounds are also a large part of why the 6 stays so composed when you ask it to make progress over a favorite back road at a pace that would feel abusive in one of its many less-agile rivals.

The 6 isn’t a sports car, but it’s clearly been engineered by people with a deep understanding of how far you can take a family hauler in that direction without making it harsh or uncivilized. It’s an expertise reflected in the accuracy of the 6’s steering, the solidity of its brakes, and throttle response that’s sharp enough to make some of the turbocharged cars here feel as if their computers communicate internally via Morse code banged out on a telegraph. And that’s not to mention the reassuring presence of a slick-shifting six-speed manual transmission, or the fact that the pedals have been carefully spaced for heel-and-toe work. Mazda clearly knows that, however improbable it will seem to most, some owners are going to want to seamlessly blend their downshifts. 

Those buff Kodo lines also give the 6 an upmarket feel well beyond its modest MSRP, as does the well-finished cabin. The stand­ard 2.5-liter four-cylinder is tuned for torque and mileage more than excitement, but it’s impressively economical. The optional capacitor-fitted i-ELOOP energy-storage ­system paired with one of the industry’s best automatic transmissions returns hybrid-like EPA numbers, reaching 40 mpg on the highway.

The more time you spend in the 6, the more you find yourself wondering how much more car you actually need. Unless you have 12 kids, the answer is probably none.