Great styling, handling, dependability
Pros:
Beautiful car, comfortable, roomy, powerful engine, good handling
Cons:
Large turning radius, automatic transmission a bit geriatric
The Bottom Line:
Great mid-sized car, great styling, good dependability and fun to drive
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
My wife bought her 2004 model year Mazda 6 in November of 04 and we have really enjoyed it. I think the styling is great, the interior is comfortable (even my parents didn't mind a 2-hr trip in the back seat), the handling and steering feel is solid and crisp, and the engine (V6) is quiet and can really launch the car forward if you tip into the gas enough. The steering wheel feels very nice in your hands, and the steering-wheel-mounted-controls are the best I've ever used - very logically arranged and convenient.
One funny quirk about the interior--the first few times you use the A/C, you will notice that the climate control will cool the car farther than you indicated. It's not really a negative thing, it's just that the dashboard indicator is a little optimistic (and the A/C works very well!) You soon get used to setting the automatic climate control to about 82 degrees for a comfortable balance on extended drives.
My only negatives for the car are in regard to the automatic transmission and turning radius.
First, the turning radius: it is surprisingly large for this kind of car. Expect to complete smooth U-turns only when there are three or four lanes in the oncoming direction.
The automatic transmission tends to shift immediately into 3rd gear as you pull away from stoplights (probably a fuel-economy feature), and this has a crippling effect on power. To accelerate more quickly, you have to tip farther and farther...and farther...into the gas pedal....until finally it kicks down to 2nd gear and launches forward.
Occasionally I'm not in the mood for this and I put the trans into the manual mode, but a problem is presented here, as well. The transmission does not respond immediately to pushes/pulls on the lever, so you have to plan your shifts and move the lever "early", and sometimes it doesn't respond at all! Many times, I have had to move the lever twice before the trans would change gear, probably because of my old habit of quickly flicking a manual trans lever from gear to gear.
Mazda engineers need to adjust the sensitivity of the manual shift mode to improve dependability of shifts, and I would prefer a bit of tweaking with the automatic mode to prevent that immediate upshift to 3rd when pulling away from stops.
