2015 Mazda 6 i Touring review notes

     Mazda’s 6 offers slick features with a manual transmission

        WEST COAST EDITOR MARK VAUGHN: When I saw the Mazda Takeri concept car at the 2011 Tokyo motor show I thought, “Hey, that’s a really nice take on a midsized sedan, but not so far out that it’s unbuildable. I bet they can produce it just as it is.” And they did. So if you find yourself wading into the celebration of the bland that is the midsized sedan segment, don’t despair. You may be forced by circumstance to buy a car of these dimensions and costs, but you don’t have to sacrifice sculptural automotive design to get it.

    Likewise, you don’t have to give up practicality, either. Heck, you don’t even have to give up a manual transmission. We all drove what may be the budget enthusiast’s last best hope in this, the biggest car segment in America -- the 2015 Mazda 6 i Touring.

    Let’s start by praising that manual transmission. As near as I could tell from plowing through spec sheets, the only other thing in this class that even offers a manual is the Honda Accord. I just drove one of those, too, and liked it a lot. The actual shifter may have been sportier in the Accord. Nonetheless, the Mazda’s shifter is real easy to use and engage. The throws are not as short as those on the Accord manual, but they’re still short enough. Engagement of each gear has some weight behind it. It’s very easy to drive for a manual. 

   Mazda Motor Corp. has unveiled a sculpted, mid-sized sedan concept that strongly foreshadows the next generation Mazda6 and comes equipped with a regenerative braking system that helps save fuel by ... 

    Our test car had the Skyactiv-G 2.5-liter DOHC naturally aspirated four-cylinder. Don’t just assume all that Skyactiv stuff is marketing hoopla like, say, Dynaride. Engineers sorted through the entire powertrain to maximize efficiencies when they introduced the technology several years ago. What they got was improvements in power and in the transfer of that power to the wheels. At least that’s what I wrote when Mazda first introduced Skyactiv, so it must be true. The engine pulls well enough from as low as 2,500 rpm and pulls strongly from 3,000 revs on up. It can launch well, too. Switch off the traction control and rev the engine to about 3,000 or 3,500 rpm then engage the clutch, modulate the pedal to just before the point at which you get axle tramp and zoom-zoom, off you go. It’s easy to launch quickly. You could race Accord manuals on the way to the Montessori drop-off point. The Accord manual has more horsepower than the Mazda 6, but only one more. And the Mazda has 4 lb-ft more torque. So performance between the last two manuals in the midsize sedan segment may be a wash.

    Otherwise it does everything a midsize sedan is supposed to do: It’s quiet at speed but gives enough engine sound at launch to let you know when to shift gears by listening instead of having to look at the tach. The interior is plenty roomy. The seats are firm and snug with lumbar support, though there was no adjustable lumbar in our test car. The infotainment system offers Bluetooth, Pandora and navigation but no satellite radio, at least not in the car I drove. EPA mileage is 25 city/37 hwy/ 29 combined -- that’s good gas mileage. I ran one tank 324.8 miles, using up 12.297 gals for 26.4 mpg. The onboard in-dash computer said 27.8 mpg.

    For $24,840 as tested, you’d get a fun-to-drive practical car that you could hold onto forever.

    Which one felt sportier behind the wheel? Both the Honda Accord Sport and Mazda 6 felt about as sporty as you figure a mass-manufacturer could get away with and still sell a bunch of cars. So drive both and then decide for yourself.

    Most other makers in this segment offer automatics-only, and a few offer CVTs. Shudder. So it is our moral duty as the last remaining car people on Earth to support carmakers that still offer manuals by voting with our credit ratings and purchasing one of these. Before it’s too late.

    ASSOCIATE WEST COAST EDITOR BLAKE Z. RONG: C’mon down ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and see what you can get in a $24,840 midsize sedan with -- gasp! -- a manual transmission: on this here Touring trim 2015 Mazda 6 i, one of you lucky buyers will get navigation, Bluetooth, a backup camera, dual-zone automatic climate controls, parking sensors, power everything, keyless entry, and 18-inch wheels your neighbors will mentally peg as “expensive.” That’s right, folks, this is a car with one of them weird European row-your-owns that isn’t stripped down. Unlike the Sport model I drove last year, you can opt for a manual and actually get features.

   What’s that like?

    For one, it will be a glorious day for the Mazda 6 when, come midcycle refresh time, Mazda finally puts the entire HMI system from the brand-new and excellent Mazda 3 in here. Until then, we get a Commander knob, with two Back buttons amidst a sea of blanks, commanding a low-res TomTom GPS system that dates itself with every Mazda it’s still on. It’s a touchscreen with layers upon layers of menus, which means the knob spends most of its time idling. The nondescript sound system devoid of any sort of high-end branding, is pretty good. But curiously enough, if you plug your Apple iPhone in via USB -- as I did -- and try to play a song through YouTube or a podcast through a dedicated app, the Mazda system will boot it off and force you only to listen to MP3s only. An iPod really is an iPod, in mid-2000s parlance. 

    Other than that, the Mazda 6 is still pretty evenly matched to previous experiences. Not quick at all -- a fair consideration, seeing as the sort of person who opts for the manual will surely get suckered into the Miata zoom-zoom hype -- but carrying freeway speeds in a way that you forget how you got there in the first place. (“How’d I get up to 80 already?") Slowness is both present and implied with a heavy throttle and a slug of an engine that sounds coarse and chattery, holding onto whatever few revs it has to offer for dear life. And yet, it returns great range and mileage to boot: one highway stint saw 31 mpg and 200 miles go by, with still half a tank left. There’s a certain discipline involved in driving a manual as a daily, as I mentioned while driving the Mazda 6 Sport. But the transmission is merely good, not great: the shifter is ropey and the clutch demands finessing. Steering feels very stuck-in-the-mud, with a large dead center and a reluctance to return to it. The brakes are great. The interior is a classy place to be -- especially with our supportive leatherette-trimmed seats, but it’s really good leatherette. Annoyingly, the windshield reflects a ton of dashboard glare.

    Ultimately, it’s disconcerting to see a manual transmission sticking out of the center console, as we did here. What’s the take rate on a manual midsize sedan? Three, I estimate -- two of them going to the Mazda Public Relations department in Irvine, Calif., and one going to a guy who lost a bet. If anything, it’s a throwback to the ’80s, when every family car had manual gear knobs sprouting out of accordion shift boots -- remember those? Because it cost $500 less than the automatic.

     But Mazda, the zoom-zoom company with substance that doesn’t always match up to the slogan, should not only be commended not only for putting a manual transmission in a midsize sedan, but also for offering 21st century features with it. It does makes you wonder, though: is that still relevant?