But first, the end of the Accord. Someone else at the studio had got a similar car, so scenes like this were common in the Autumn of 2022 into early ’23:
Mine (on the left) had better lights and mirrors, see? Oh, and a shark-fin antenna at the back of the roof:
And one morning late last year, I found this amusing snow-moustache:
In February of this year, I learnt all about the newest(?) scummy scam to be encountered in trying to sell a car on the likes of Kijiji or Craigslist: they reply to the ad from a distant area code; mostly from Toronto, in this case, and probably all spoofed. They make interested noises by text message—why, this is exactly the sort of car they’ve been looking for, and they have cash in hand, and they’d like to come see it. Just one thing, though; they want to see a [non-Carfax vehicle history report company-dot-com nobody’s ever heard of] report on it. I say “I’ve got the Carfax on it, as it says in the ad; I’ll be happy to send it over to you.” They say no, they don’t want the Carfax, they want the [other name] report, and it’s fast and easy to get—affordable, too!—at website-dot-com. I didn’t keep count, but I guess I got about 20 of these bogus bites, comprising about five ‘different’ (uh-huh) services. Some of them were aggressively pushy about it, too. I quickly lost patience with the game and started jumping cues and saying their lines in the scriptoid before they could get to them. Eventually I just responded to the first new text with “Does this scam ever actually work for you?”. None responded.
I’d had the car detailed and taken the usual assortment of pics, such as these:
By and by, the car sold. It garnered less than I had hoped for, given the overheated used-car market, but it went away, and that was the main thing. An earnest early-20s collegegoer from India got a very good deal, and it generated stories on its way out my life: his friend, new to Canada and I think without much English, drove him here from Surrey (suburb). We went off to the nearest open-on-Sunday-evenings ICBC office, about 10 minutes’ drive, to formalise the sale—licence plates, etc—but there was a system problem, so they directed us to the next-nearest place about 5 minutes more away. The system problem was systemwide, as it turned out. So my name and plates were off the car, but the rest of the stuff he’d have to do the next day in Surrey. We drove back to my house and discovered not a damn thing but air where friend’s Toyota Corolla had been parked in a no-stop zone. They went to call 911 and I suggested trying 311 first (city → parking). Yep, towed. I’d never seen a tow truck in our street. I’ve seen people leave cars and motorcycles there in that very no-stop zone for hours and days and maybe get a ticket, but this tow job was a new one on me, and it’s not happened again, that I’ve seen. The tow yard was a 10-minute drive away, over by the railway station. Fortunately they were still open, so it wouldn’t be a hafta-come-back-tomorrow-which-counts-as-a-second-storage-day circus. I drove them there and they got the Corolla out of hock. They put his not-quite-squeaky-legal plates on the Accord, dropped me off near where I’d been parking the Mazda, and drove off for Surrey. I collected Bill from work and drove us home in the Mazda.
Right, then—the Mazda! That story starts when I read Fierrorunner’s COAL post about his ’16 Mazda 6, a rare build in Soul Red with a handshift transmission and a cream interior rather than black, grey, charcoal, dark quartz, burnt midnight, or one of the unreasonably large number of other ways of saying the same thing. I’m an old veteran expert at powerwasting time on the internet, so the whim to go see how rare was this rare Mazda went right through the spinal cord without my having to dream it up. Craigslist immediately sprang forth an ad for an almost identical car, but a ’14 model.
Texts and emails were exchanged; conversations were had. I drove (the Accord) over the river and through the woods out to Suburburgh and had a look and a bit of a drive. I talked it over with Bill and the two of us trekked back out to see if he would fit comfortably in the car: yes. Then there were negotiations, ugh. I wound up paying more than I wanted to for the car; evidently the white-hot used car market worked against me when I bought, and ignored me when I sold. Grumble.
Oh, how the water did bead with a detail job! Note the dark-tinted backglass.
But the Accord was gone and now I had this, my first Mazda—the first syllable of which rhymes with “daz” in this country, not “boz”. It is a vastly superior car to the Accord in almost every way. Over the first few months I got reacquainted with forgotten feelings: now I like my car. I even catch myself actually enjoying driving, which never ever happened in the Honda. It’s an agreeable change to be in a car with a short list of minor gripes, and I’ll get those out the way first: the materials and apparent construction quality are a couple notches below the Honda. The handbrake handle is a little wobbly by design, that kind of thing. And probably the thing I like least is that the front doors sound inexcusably tinny upon closing. Seriously, they sound like a cheap, thin steel cookie sheet whapped onto a countertop, nothing like the solid crumph of the Honda’s doors. Even my Dodge Spirits had heftier-sounding doors. There are websites showing how to fix it by removing the door cards and strategically installing small amounts of peel-and-stick deadener; perhaps I’ll get around to it. Road and wind noise also aren’t super well excluded; they’re about the same as in the Accord, but that car was launched 11 years before this one, so it’s sort of less okeh in the newer car. I’m told these GJ-series 6s got a great deal quieter for 2017 or so, but I’m still less than entirely impressed at Mazda for having dropped the ball on basic NVH stuff like this. Still, there are pages with fixes for that, too.
The HVAC controls are less completely awful than the Honda’s, but still scarcely operable by feel—another basic design failure. This is my first car with a display screen in the dashboard. I quickly figured out how to switch it off, and if it could be made to keep just the radio station showing, I’d be all the way completely delighted that it remains off full-time except when I’m in Reverse, when it shows the backing camera view. This is also my first car with one of those, and it is a giant help, even if the image quality is not up to today’s possibilities. Another minor gripe-and-half here: it takes a fraction of a second to power up, which by itself wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s obviously powered by the reversing light circuit, so it shuts off at the same instant as the reversing lamps. It would be much nicer if it remained active for even just five seconds; it would make manœuvring into or out of a parking space a whole lot easier. I know exactly how I’d try making that so. In theory, it would be easy; perhaps I’ll get around to that, too. In the meantime, I’m working on remembering to look down, not just up, when reversing; the view’s better down there.
It is an engaging car to drive, in large part because of the do-it-myself shifting. I’ve long known that, but it had been many years since I’d felt it; a long time since my last handshift car. I’ve borrowed a three-pedal truck a few times over those years, and that was usually a knuckle-whitening experience (heavy load, unfamiliar vehicle with a bazillion miles on it, etc). That doesn’t really count. I was a little worried stick-shifting would become tiresome in city traffic, but at worst it’s a minor annoyance—outweighed by having something to do, glory be. And this car has an automatic hill-holder: with the clutch pedal down and the car inclined up or down, I get about two seconds’ time between letting go the brake pedal and the brakes releasing. It works in forward and reverse, and it’s a giant help in starting up or down hills. Purists may scoff, but I’ll absolutely take it. I’ve been driving this car almost all year, and my terror of uphill starts with a car behind me is finally, gradually beginning to fade. When I’m not reminding myself to relax in preparation for such a start, I have fun practising my double clutching and rev-matched downshifts. Necessary? No. Fun? Effyeah! Could wish the clutch pedal weren’t quite so close to the brake pedal, but…eh.
And so now, at long last, I’ll introduce the car by name. Oh yeah, that’s another thing: this is the first car I’ve named since the Crapiece over two decades ago. I never much liked Mazda’s number-only model names. Not a whole lot wrong with “Mazda 6”, but I cannot abide “Mazda6”, and I do not tolerate “Mazda Mazda6”. So a bit of a rebadge was in order—something I’ve not done before. I knew within days of getting the car what I’d call it, and it wasn’t going to be the ‘Atenza’ name this car bore in some markets, so it took some doing to come up with the needed badge. Eventually I did. Before:
…and after:
I present to you: Manuel Capella (“mahn-WELL kahp-EH-yah”). Because it’s a manual-shift car, and I like the name Capella, and I like “Fawlty Towers”. So there.
It’s got an absolute honey of an engine: a 2.5-litre GDI four. It has 13:1 compression and runs on regular 87 gasoline, which is a seriously cool bit of magic. And it doesn’t seem to run any better on high-test 94, which is another. It is vastly more economical of fuel than the Honda was. I mean, like, at least 40 per cent more economical in town. It is torquey and tractable and smooth, with juuuuuuust enough of a tremble at idle to telegraph “C’mon, let’s go, let’s motor!”. And up through the gears, it sounds remarkably like the high-zoot 2.2 T3 engine in my Spirit R/T—maybe it’s a sound characteristic of 16-valve 4-cylinder engines? Donno, but I like it. Speaking of sounds, I hesitate to sound like a fanboy, which I’m not, but I do think Mazda weren’t just blowing smoke with that ‘Zoom-Zoom’ slogan of theirs around the time they made this car.
I bought and applied a reproduction decal for a late-’60s/early-’70s Tecumseh engine. No word of a lie; go on, try to find a set of breaker points—I dare you. Why’s it on the airbox? Because I said so, that’s why.
Most of the controls and displays are thoughtfully designed and configured, though the pushbutton ignition switch is a nuisance and the automatic door locking on keyholder walk-away has some inscrutable logic to it that makes it less than 100 per cent reliable. I also might prefer if this car were the top rather than middle trim line, then it’d have the upgraded instrument panel. I don’t know for sure if that would bring some gauges (oil pressure, engine temperature, line voltage), but seems to me the odds would be good. Then again, it kind of surprises me Mazda didn’t include any but a fuel gauge on the regular IP. It’s got a thermometer-shaped telltale which lights up in blue until the engine’s warm (I object; this looks too much like the also-blue high beam indicator) or red if the engine overheats. That’s not my favourite unfeature. Also the high trim would have adaptive cruise control and adaptive HID headlamps. None of that on this car. I put thoughtfully-chosen bulbs in the regular halogen headlamps, which improved them quite a lot. There’s a giant canyon between the light a driver wants and the light a driver needs, even when that driver knows much too much about the topic; I don’t love these headlamps, but they’re objectively well more than good enough (as these things go; low beams are categorically inadequate to the task we ask of them).
Speaking of the headlamps, I went to get them aimed. That is a very difficult thing to do on this continent! Lamp aim is by far the prime determinant of how well or poorly one sees at night and how much glare they’re throwing around, but in North America we just don’t give a carp. Awhile back, I did an unscientific survey: I called around to a variety of shops and dealerships, said I wanted my headlamps aimed, and asked how they do it. The most common responses were along these lines:
• “We don’t, really, but if yours are way out we can try to level ’em out for you”
• “We shine ’em on a wall”
• “Are you getting flashed?”, and
• “Today’s headlights don’t need to be aimed, they set ’em at the factory” (or
“…they aim themselves automatically”).
Those are all super-extra-wrong answers.
When I got this car, it was immediately apparent that at least one of its headlamps was improperly aimed; the left lamp shone higher than the right one. Where I live, as in most of the U.S. and Canada, no vehicle inspection is ever required, so I could have gone right on driving it as-was; that’s what most people do. Of course, I couldn’t accept that. I live in a medium-sized city with plenty of auto garages, but only at great difficulty did I find a shop—one shop—in my greater metropolitan area with an aiming machine and the will to use it. In clear traffic it was most of an hour’s drive away, past countless other shops unable or unwilling to do the job.
They let me watch, which I did without mentioning any expertise or credentials. They were using an old green Bosch aiming scope, a veteran of at least 40 years, with a Europe/rest-of-world type
adjustment wheel calibrated in declination percentage, and no factory- or field-applied markings for the overwhelmingly common North American-spec lamps. That’s not a dealbreaker; if one knows what one’s doing, American lamps can be aimed with such a machine by dialling in the correct setting. But there were no fingerprints evident on the thickly-dusty setting wheel, which looked like it was never moved from the 0.0% setting. My car’s headlamps just happen to be the type that takes a 0.0% setting, but that seemed more a matter of chance than deliberate setup; the mechanic never checked the lenses to see what type they are—had my headlamps been VOLs, they would have been aimed wrong with the scope at 0.0%. Grumble, but at least I got an aim job closer to correct than most people located between sea and shining sea (and North Pole).
The car came to me with dark tint film on the rear door windows and the backglass. For a bunch of reasons, that had to go away. For one thing, that crap hinders outward visibility; I felt like I was perpetually driving out of a dark cave. For another, it hinders inward visibility, and I don’t fancy frightening or enraging any cops. Three, I’ve never liked the mismatched look of blacked-out back windows and untinted front ones. The tint came off the door glass without drama, but it took most of the defogger grid and radio antenna off with it from the backglass, snarl. I went to my excellent glass guy and he asked whether I wanted an aftermarket ($x) or original-maker ($2x) glass. I asked him if aftermarket glass had got better since the last bad experience I had with it (on the Accord). He was ambivalent about it: In general, aftermarket glass has got better than it used to be. And China’s Fuyau/FYG, the biggest aftermarket supplier, make a lot of original-equipment glass. But on the other hand, there’s still often a significant difference between OE and aftermarket. But on the other other hand, aftermarket glass is half the cost. Eventually we decided he’d bring in the aftermarket glass and we’d see how it looked. The glass guy said while we waited for my appointment, I oughtta watch an Oscar-winning documentary called “American Factory”, about Fuyao’s Ohio operation. It sure didn’t give me any warm fuzzies about Fuyao and their ilk; this article is a pretty good quick summary (and in looking now, I see that movie sparked federal scrutiny of Fuyao; I hope they got nailed).
The glass came in, and we didn’t see any issues with it. It was Ⓔ-marked, etc, and in it went. The shop did their usual high-quality work, and I had a working antenna and defogger again. What I didn’t have was acceptable rearward vision. There was no perceptible problem with the glass as examined on a stand, but once installed, the fast rake angle revealed giant distortions across the whole lower third of the glass. Car lights behind me would jump small-BIG-smallBIGsmallBIGsmallBIGsmall. Lane lines behind me were a scribbled-up zigzag mess. It was a constant, nagging distraction in the rearview mirror. Glass guy was a rock star: not a scrap of argument from him. He ordered the OE glass and all I had to pay was the part ∂cost. There’s no such distortion with the Japanese glass. So that’s how I learnt that aftermarket glass is very much like aftermarket headlamps: lookalike looks, copycat quality. Don’t even get me started on the ‘CAPA certified’ scam.
Oh, speaking of glass: genuine Mazda wiper blade refills appear to be from the same Japanese supplier who make them for Honda, and they are likewise massively better than any of the plain or fancy parts store brands.
The car also came to me with Continental IceContact XTRM tires, Russian ones. I have nothing against Continental in general or their tires in particular, but I was not happy to be rolling around on Russian rubber, and running winter tires in summer is unwise. The shortest version of my short list of things I buy the best I possibly can includes tires, eyeglasses, shoes, and brakes; I bought Michelin CrossClimate2s. They’re made in Canada, and I like that a lot better. More generally, they’re not from Russia or China, so fine by me. And they’re Ⓔ-marked. Which doesn’t necessarily mean a good tire (or headlamp, etc), but I do like having the assurance that it meets something other than the North American regulatory island’s ‘Yeah, whatever; it’s all good, we don’t really care unless bodies start piling up’ standards. I like them; they’re good tires.
Problems with the car? Well, it had some weird electrical behaviour: the lights inside and outside the car were a little flickery with the engine running, and they’d grow dimmer on engine acceleration, which is opposite what’s often seen when there’s a faulty alternator or something. It wasn’t major, this flickering and fluctuation, but I noticed it. I more or less figured it was just a quirk of the car and resolved to try not to be bothered.
Then the battery came up lame at the end of March when we went to go run errands: 5.4 volts across it. One block from parts store—just like Accord last November, but different parts store. I walked over, bought a MagnaCharge 35-625. Never heard of ’em, and I remember when batteries had longer warranties than 30 months, and I remember when they used to routinely outlast their warranties, but…one block away and right now versus Lyft across town or wait for Amazon or whatever. Plus, this one has what used to be called a Delco Eye! Green built-in hydrometer. I walked back and installed it.
And we set off on our errands, but just as we were belting in came that thing where you finish putting in a new battery, car starts up fine, then you notice the overhead doom light switch in the ON position, which is weird because you never touch that switch and always just leave the doom light in DOOR mode. It’s not an easy switch to accidentally hit, either. Recessed, etc. No idea how that happened; neither of us ever touches it. But we must have without meaning to, unless some weirdo defeated the security system, entered the car, turned it on, then closed and locked the car.
But perhaps it was just Gladys (“Gladys, Gladys, full of grace: may we have a parking space?”) helpfully arranging for me to replace the battery in a low-hassle manner. And with the new battery there’s no more flickering or light fluctuation, so that’s fine. Lost my clock setting and my radio presets, but there was no ‘Oh, no, uh-uh, you will have to enter a sixty-one-digit security code and pass twelve consecutive CAPTCHAs within the next seven seconds or else the car will need to be taken to an authorised dealer before it will start/before you can use the radio/etc’ baloney to deal with. All I had to do was reset my presets and re-teach the car where the door window up- and down-stops are so the one-touch up and down would go back to working. Oh, that’s another thing: one-touch up/down for all four windows, not just the driver’s. That’s extra expensive to build, and I’m glad they spent the money.
No further electrical issues, but increasingly there’s a creaking, groaning noise when I turn the steering wheel or go over the likes of a speed hump. There’s a TSB for it, issued in 2018: faulty ball bearings below the upper strut mounts causing the wheel-turning creak, and there are revised lower control arm bushings for the speed-hump creak. I’ve got the parts on order.
Let’s see, what else? Someone keyed the driver’s door one night a couple months ago, and put a weird longitudinal crease several inches below where they keyed it. Why? Because people suck. We don’t have any feuds with neighbours, so it seems random. Our street is a bit narrow, and I park as close to the curb as can be, and I fold the street-side mirror, but I guess someone didn’t quite keep their car out of contact, creased the door, then took a key to it to express their displeasure at the whole thing. I was expecting a fight out of ICBC, but they approved coverage for the repair. Pretty big-ticket repair, in the end, done to a high standard of craftsmanship by the same shop who fixed the vandalism to my last dark metallic red car.
The colour’s fine with me; I’d prefer a green or a purple, but I like it better than silver or beige or black or white or grey. The front and rear bumper fascias don’t match the metal parts of the car, but they match each other, which suggests the car was in some kind of a crunch not reported to insurance, sometime in the past. And the paint quality is not 10/10 on the parts of the car which give every appearance of bearing factory paint. But you see what I mean? My gripes are few and minor. This is much better than trying in vain to find anything to like about the Accord, other than its reliability. Think I’ll hold onto this one for awhile, Gladys willing.
I have a 2019 Mazda CX-9, and it has the same issues with the auto-lock on walk away (different combos of time before door opening and whether you also open rear, etc.); cause the doors to not lock on occasion. Ditto on the meh rear camera. Also, the screen refuses to hold the radio station that was on when I last shut off the car and defaults to the FM search screen.
I tolerate theses minor quirks because it is otherwise an excellent car. Mazda seems to be the only mainstream marque that still cares about the driving experience.
Yup, that’s the not-quite-reliability of the auto-lock: usually if one closes the door with fob in pocket or hand, the car beeps, then beeps and locks as one walks away. But sometimes(!) if I close the driver’s door, open the back door to get something out, and close the back door…no beep/no auto-lock. And usually if(!) this happens I notice it and press the button on the fob or doorhandle to lock the car, but if one must be dilligently vigilent, what’s the point of the system in the first place? I’m considering disabling it entire and just locking the car by myself, as in the olden days.
I don’t have a problem with the screen defaulting to something other than what it was doing when I was last in the car; I have it switched off, and it stays off. But having to choose between all-the-way-off and all-the-way-on (with big illuminated graphics and a bunch of options and other distracting dreck) is not commendable. If I will change the radio station, the station frequency appears briefly, by itself, legibly and not distractingly, but it doesn’t stay, and it should. Black mark for that.
… and that’s when the thing is working. Do NOT allow the car’s battery to drain if you want to avoid having to go to the dealer for re-booting the electronic gizmos (ask me how I know. Mine is a 2015 3 but I very much doubt the set-up is different on your car). I can still use the car but entry is via the key and you have to touch the starter button with the key fob to start it. Not too much of a pain for someone who got his driver’s licence in 1977 but I’ll have it sorted when the car is serviced.
Odd. As you can see from the stories, the battery did indeed go flat, all the way down to 5.4 volts (12.6 is normal). I didn’t have to get anything rebooted or reprogrammed or anything. Maybe 5.4v was still enough to maintain the car’s recollection of the existence of its key fobs? But the voltage did go to 0 when I removed the old battery, so…?
My only explanation is that it’s possible the 2015 3 has an updated version of the key-less entry system with “improvements” luckily missing in your car. My understanding is it’s an issue on all BM/BN 3s.
For what it’s worth, I bought my blue 2018 Focus ST brand new, and the bumpers never quite matched the rest of the paint, and did match each other. Not totally sure why, and everyone’s first reaction was that they were repainted, but no. Just a poor factory job, could be the same for you
Photo failed to post the first time
Bumper covers are painted separately from the rest of the body because a flex additive is used so that the paint doesn’t crack from a small flexing. So it is pretty common to see the bumper covers be a slightly different shade, from the factory, whether it is due to the flex additive, the fact that a different batch of paint was used, or a combination of the two.
Several commenters here have mentioned that, and now you mention it I did see another Soul Red Mazda awhile ago, a CX-5, I think, with what looked like exactly the same mismatch. So now I’m leaning toward your theory.
Yes, we have a 2016 Fusion in a deep red that is a bear to repair properly. And, it came from the factory with mildly mismatched bumper covers.
Our 2018 black Fusion is flawless. Some colors seem to present more challenges.
Congrats on the new(ish) car! I love the name, and wonder how many people stop you at the curb/parking lot to ask “What is a Capella?”
I too feel positively disposed toward a Mazda and if I had to have a new(ish) car, I’d seriously look at one like the 5 that you got. Good for you scoring a manual transmission car as well. It seems like you may be one of the few folks I have heard of who have gone the opposite route of moving from an automatic to a manual. Excellent. Now, if we could only convince another couple of hundred thousand North American buyers to do the same, there may still be a chance that a few of these would continue to be imported. Fat chance of that though.
I also dislike aftermarket window tinting and would try to have it removed. On the other hand, the pain of having to replace the rear glass would be huge. Ugh. I think a case MAY be made for that stuff if one lives in perpetually sunny areas (aka, the desert and perhaps FL), but why someone would have that installed in British Columbia is a mystery of bad taste to me. Well, Manuel is better off without it.
Finally, yes, headlight aiming. The last I saw someone use one of those aiming boxes (which in your picture looks like a technician forcing a car to commune with an airplane “black” box.) must have been 30 years ago during one of my annual state inspections. Since then, it’s always just been shining the lights on a wall (a wall with kind of ruler marks on it…sometimes not…and usually the wall is just a sheet of plywood painted black that is rolled into place at the end of the bay, making it pretty much useless). I too have been told that “modern headlights don’t need to be aimed”. Nevertheless, I do usually see the aiming box leaning against the wall in the inspection bay. Likely not touched since gas was $0.25/gal.
Good to read a new Daniel Stern piece. Nice car, nice article!
“What is a Capella?”
I would have so much fun answering that questions with “Vocal music without instrumental accompaniment. Why do you ask?” 🙂
That, of course, is almost the only acceptable answer to the question. I might prefer a variant with an inbuilt pop culture reference, to wit: “Vocal music without instrumental accompaniment, but that’s not important right now”.
Funny you should (inadvertently?) mention the Mazda 5; that was a model I was looking for—I rented several of them over the years, and liked them, but they’re old enough now that they’re all pretty much used up or headed that direction, let alone trying to find a low-KMs unit with manual transmission.
Nobody’s asked me about the Capella badge yet, and I don’t imagine it’ll happen soon.
I can understand the desire to make it cooler in the car; we might not get up to Arizona or Florida temperatures, but it can get oppressively hot at the height of summer. But dark tint, even the highest-quality stuff, is just plain flat no. I’ve had good results with Llumar’s nearly-invisible Air80/Air90 film on previous cars; it does a very good job of cutting sun heat without blocking visible light. But the experience with the backglass has me gunshy about the whole biz.
The headlight aim thing is ridiculous. Like, “Here, I have my wallet out; take some of my money and spend 20 minutes using that machine over there”. Nope.
I won’t ask where Capella came from because anybody into Mazdas already knows.
The Mazda Capella, also known as the 626 in North America and Southeast Asia, is a mid-size car that was manufactured by Mazda from 1970 until 2002. Sold in the Japanese domestic market under the Capella name, the vehicle was also commonly known in other major markets as the Mazda 626
I know that the 626 was called the Capella in Japan, but one of the brightest stars in the night sky is also called Capella.
Well, I don’t know where Capella came from.
Whilst it is not, say, a 1938 Chapron-bodied Delage – which probably lurked just out of range of your budget – this Mazda surely raises the aesthetics of your street over the clumsy-looking US Accord. They make very handsome machines, Mazda (also with the “az” pronounced as in “as,” in Oz).
The slightly noisy operation of their cars has also long been noted, especially here, where any car with a road noise issue is shown up very quickly on the tyre-shredding hotmix that is universally used on most two-lane country roads. All the various resonant tones joining in a dissonant accapella, as it were. Incidentally, I did not know cappella was said cap-eh-ya, and that’s even with me having an unfindable squeak in my old Pug 505 that I told the kids was Basil the Rat (so I know my Manuel-speak).
And speaking of manual, you’re right. After a short time, you don’t notice the effort of shifting in town, and are free to do the usual things (teeth-cleaning, shaving, Pokemon, texting, gesturing impolitely, etc). In anything remotely modern, it’s hardly like clunking a Valiant column three speed and balancing it’s inexplicably heavy, sproingy clutch. Though in very general terms, Euro manual jobbies are NEVER as slick to drive as the Japanese ones, with Mazda always amongst the best to shift in my experience.
Very pleased that someone else out there thinks the so-marketed “privacy tint” sections just look ill-matched. I thought it was just me.
Very good article (of course). Say, can I get you started on the CAPA-certified scam? Well, enough to give a hint as to what it is, or was?
I’m not sure what award that just won you, but it did.
That’s how I choose to say it. Have you not heard the Good News? Anything sounds sexy and exotic and awesome in a foreign language. English-speakers just seem to sort of mentally avoid the fact that they talk about sewer backups and projectile vomitting and beaches full of festering dead fish in Spanish and Italian and French from time to time, too.
There’s a –
Capell– compelling case to be made that Capella’s meant to be said “cup-PELL-uh”, but I like my way better.I reckoned if ever again I wanted to shift for myself, this would probably be my last chance; the manual transmission is all but extinct in North America, and I guess my next car will probably be electric. This 6-speed manual is Starship Enterprise-level compared to those ’60s cars with non-synchro first gear and 2nd-to-3rd shift directions that run along the lines of “Well, you head north five or six miles til you get to where the old Schmidt place used to be before it burned down, then head east—cool it on that stretch; they don’t take kindly to speeders around those parts—and then when that road dead-ends, turn left and go another five or six miles and eventually you’ll find third gear”.
CAPA, the “Certified Auto Parts Association”, is a lobbying organisation put together by the importers of copycat car parts poorly made in mostly-China. “CAPA certification” is a successful con job by that organisation, to get insurance companies to insist on body shops using this dreck rather than legitimate repair parts. Lookit this CAPA promotional video, which nicely illustrates the farce (self-awareness much?). The video, purporting to show the superiority of “CAPA-certified” parts, compares only an OE component and a non-“CAPA-certified” aftermarket replacement. For some strange reason that certainly can’t be guessed, they don’t show us how the “CAPA-certified” aftermarket part does. It’s a total mystery, that is. I’d lay money their “certified” part is about as cruddy as “certified” aftermarket lamps and lights, all of which are of significantly poorer quality, performance, and durability than original-equipment ones.
The criteria for CAPA certification heavily prioritise making a lamp that looks like the original; the performance and durability requirements are “Shall meet all applicable regulations”, and that’s the argument they make: “Our parts meet all applicable federal safety standards, just like the original parts!”, as though that makes them alike. It does not. Think about it; a 1995 Chevrolet Cavalier and a 1995 Mercedes S-Class both met all applicable regulations; which one do you want to be in if there’s going to be a crash? Likewise, a $6 sealed beam and a $6,000 adaptive LED headlamp for an Audi both meet all applicable regulations. That doesn’t mean they’re equally safe, it just means they’re equally legal. The standards allow a giant range of performance, but legality is yes/no. Nevertheless, Clarence Ditlow, a major American auto safety and consumer-protection activist, ate up this slop with a spoon and spouted nonsense about how ‘generic’ parts are good for consumers because cheaper repairs.
Aren’t you glad you asked?
I am, actually. By coincidence, it’s about the third tale of things-that-seem-respectable-enough but are gobsmackingly not that’s come onto my radar this week!
But yes, I shall have a little lie down now, as perhaps should you.
“Basil”!!
“Aiigh!”
Congrats, Daniel, nice car and an entertaining writeup.
If I hadn’t found our perfectly-configured Camry at three grand below book value and in mint condition from a Mercedes dealership that treated me like royalty rather than bottom-feeding scum, I’d have snapped up the first Mazda 6 that came along in acceptable condition and configuration. These are great sedans.
I like the 2016+ refresh; they revised the dashboard design and it didn’t seem any louder than the comparable Accord or Camry. Best 4-cylinder powertrain, interior materials, and driver’s seat of the trio. Given how well the 2.5 does with the slushbox, your manual transmission is likely a very enjoyable car to drive.
I imagine at least some of my gripes got sorted in subsequent years; this is a first-yearmobile with the attendant realities.
Mazda still offer an Apple CarPlay/Android Auto retrofit for my car. I sometimes sort of think about it—I don’t bother with the onboard nav system, which…is from 2014. It might be nice to be able to use Apple Maps via the dashboard screen. But I’ve managed this long by just dialling the destination in on my phone, then chucking it in the cup holder and letting the Irish dude who lives inside my phone tell me when and where to turn, and that is the only way I use my phone while driving. Which reminds me, from time to time my thumb fouls the phone call button on the steering wheel and a voice starts prattling on about options for making a call until I find the cancel/hang-up button and hit it. Perhaps I’ll get around to seeing if I can disable that switch; in my car there is zero phoning while driving, hands-free or otherwise.
Congrats, Daniel, nice car and an entertaining writeup.
If I hadn’t found our perfectly-configured Camry at three grand below book value and in mint condition from a Mercedes dealership that treated me like royalty rather than bottom-feeding scum, I’d have snapped up the first Mazda 6 that came along in acceptable condition and configuration. These are great sedans.
I like the 2016+ refresh; they revised the dashboard design and it didn’t seem any louder than the comparable Accord or Camry. Best 4-cylinder powertrain, interior materials, and driver’s seat of the trio. Given how well the 2.5 does with the slushbox, your manual transmission is likely a very enjoyable car to drive.
Nice car and writeup.
Tried to comment more, both went straight to trash and I’ve got no way of rescuing them even while logged in.
Oh my GAWD I thought Gladys was just a San Francisco thing!!! I’d be interested to know the origin story
She has many names.
Hail Janice
Full of pot
Help us find our parking spot.
springs to mind, and which sounds a bit SanFran itself, actually.
Congratulations on the new to you ride. I was wondering if you had finally got rid of the much despised Accord and what you would replace it with.
I like the color combo, in fact the toy I recently purchased has a similar color scheme and I chose that combo because of the tan interior. I have too many vehicles with a black, grey or black and grey interior.
Regarding the battery I too was a little surprised when I went to buy a battery a little while back and found that a truce had been called in the pro-rated warranty wars and the norm was now 24, 30, 36 month full replacement warranties. I think one of the reasons they have done that is due to the fact that modern cars are very hard on batteries with all of the electronics that take a while to go to sleep if they do at all. On the scan tool I’ve watched as my car will draw ~20a for a few seconds after shut down and then slowly drops to drawing 4-6 amps for several minutes. Then the car never fully charges the battery because CAFE. So yeah ~4 years has been the lifespan of batteries in that car so far. Note it is a hybrid so it doesn’t use the 12v battery to crank the engine and it only has a 400 cca rating and a 60 min RC. Once it gets weak the car does start to act up. When it gets real weak it does tell you with a message on the display that it is shutting of the radio to conserve battery power, just a few seconds after turning off the car.
Speaking of conserving battery, while it does sound like the battery was due, I am surprised that the car doesn’t have a battery saver function. Ford started putting that in during the early 00’s where it will shut the dome, or other lights off after 10min. Looking at a modern Mazda owner’s manual it says that it will shut off the dome light after 15min if the car is off. I guess it is possible they got rid of that function and then brought it back but chances are your battery was so weak that it was drained by just 10-15 min of that dome light.
I’m also surprised that you had to redo your radio presets and relearn the 1 touch window functions. Many automakers have gone to radio presets that persist after power down just so they can remove these lines from a million places in the FSM. “Before disconnecting battery record radio presets” and “after reconnecting battery reprogram customer’s presets” and eliminate the customer frustration when the tech didn’t do that. One touch window and hatch/trunk settings usually persist after power down too, the only time I’ve had to reprogram windows was when the window was in a partially down position when the battery was disconnected and reconnected.
You may want to look into Forscan. Mazda continued to use Ford protocols for some time after the divorce so chances are you can reconfigure to get rid of the auto locking and since it has 4 one touch windows the ability to close or open them with the fob.
Here is a page with some of the known things that can be done. https://forscan.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3379 not sure if the auto locking they are talking about is when the car gets moving or when the fob gets out of range.
Forgot to mention that the car may want to know that it has a new battery, and if it differs from the original to adjust its charging profile. That can be reset with Forscan if the vehicle uses such a strategy.
Looks like an interesting rabbit hole. The page you linked doesn’t seem to list anything that can’t be done using the inbuilt user interface, and now you’ve got me curious what-all can be tweaked. H’mmm.
As to battery life: I don’t think I’m onside, at least not fully so, with the idea that increased parasitic drain makes batteries die sooner today than they used to. I think they’ve just got better at making batteries that last just barely longer than the number on the label.
That was just the first page I came across that had Mazda stuff on it. Good chance there are things that can be done that you can’t do with the inbuilt interface. Depending on the vehicle you may also be able to change what is able to be changed via that interface. But of course what you can do is dependent on the exact vehicle.
For example my car being a US spec has user selectable DRLs, of course that is not legal in Canada so vehicles heading there have that option removed from the interface. Interestingly on US fleet orders it used to be a $40 option to remove DRL controls from the interface.
Things I’ve changed in my car.
The heated steering wheel is set to 68 degrees in my year and model while other years and other countries have it at different (higher) temps. So I bumped mine up to 90 degrees as the European equivalent is shipped.
Lane change signal from 3 blinks to 4.
In my truck when I changed the tire size I was able to correct the speedo/odo.
One of my favorite things though are the TPMS functions. It allows you to enter relearn mode with a couple of clicks instead of doing the ignition cycling and brake pedal dance. It also allows me to check all 4 tire pressures, again with just a couple of clicks on my phone.
It of course also allows you to all the typical scan tool functions of reading codes, live data, self tests and service functions.
Note you can’t make changes to settings with the Android/iOS versions, you need a Windows machine to do that, preferably with a wired connection. For everything else the phone app and a wireless adapter is preferred.
As far as battery life goes the increased parasitic drain definitely does not help battery life, particularly in vehicles that aren’t driven daily. My car that goes through batteries in 4 years has a small battery for packaging and weight reasons. It also has a battery management system that limits charging to 80%. Meanwhile my vehicles that don’t have 40 modules or a system limiting charging and a reasonably sized battery still get 6 or more years worth of life, despite the fact that they can sit weeks at a time w/o use.
I did some sniffing around on the DRLs—high beam DRLs are really a poor way to do it, and I like the idea of moving that function elsewhere; that’s another thing I might get around to. There’s a chicken-dance procedure for turning them off on US models, one of these ‘close the driver’s door six times in rapid succession, turn the headlamps on-off-on-off-auto-on-off-auto-on-off, activate the right turn signal and let it flash seven times, activate the left turn signal and let it flash seven times, then while applying the brakes tap the ignition switch twice’ things. As you mention, it does not work on Canadian-spec cars. Which is really silly, because there’s another, much easier, easily-reversible way of disabling them without hacking or risking or ruining anything, affecting anything else, or causing any new problems.
My car’s TPMS is reset by pressing the tire-exclamation-point button on the dash to the left of the steering column and holding it for a few seconds. That sounds different to yours (what’s yours?).
A heated steering wheel is another of the items my car doesn’t have.
I meant to mention in the post that after a few months I deactivated the automatic-3-blink turn signal; it was annoying when I’d accidentally hit the lever.
Oh shoot. This site has been playing hell with my sad sack of an old MacBook of late, so I started typing up a comment a couple days ago, but never got around to copy-pasting here.
I started having poorer luck with battery longevity about the time that battery manufacturers started cramming more and more CCA into standard car batteries, and it probably got a bit worse yet with batteries like the one in my friend’s 2018 Honda CR-V… that one is sized not much bigger than a garden tractor battery. These mega CCA car batteries are not unlike a motorcycle battery, where manufacturers cram as many paper thin plates into them as they can to get as much starting oomph into the smallest package, but they don’t have much tolerance for cycling. And that’s where it might turn into an apples/oranges thing, as I mostly drive older vehicles that don’t have a large enough alternator to keep the battery on charge 100% of the time when the engine is running; they tend to lean on the battery a fair bit when you’re, say, idling at an intersection on a cold night with the heater and wipers on. It was surprising how quickly those very thin lead plates would buckle and crumble if the battery was cycled more than just a quick burst to start the engine. Perhaps I’m just hard on batteries…
My ex had a 2014 Mazda 3 with a TPMS reset button exactly like and in the same location as yours. That was a nice touch! Hers also had the crummy high beam DRL’s, which would blaze through bedroom windows when I pulled into parking spots at night in the high density apartment complex we lived in; they’d come on as I tried to tame the low beams back to position lamps to avoid lighting up bedrooms at 1:00am. I finally figured out that also engaging the parking brake to the first click as I was nosing in would extinguish them. She used her high beams about twice per year, so the bulbs would gradually build up brownish deposits on the inside of the envelope, though a long night drive out in the country usually cleared it off. Never installed anything beyond the stock 9005 bulbs, as she always sweated about the car still being under warranty, and didn’t seem to care about anything beyond low beams. I think the majority of my minor grumbles about the car stemmed around having it fight you with stuff like controlling lighting… The position lamps would turn off on their own about 30 seconds after you turned the ignition off, so I couldn’t deliberately leave them on when I might have needed them for five minutes or so. I thought you had to have all of those settings modified by the dealer, but I probably didn’t research enough. And one last funny thing: The seatbelt chime preempted the manufactured click of the turn signals. Not sure why that amused me, but Mazda seemed to strive to make the synthetic *click clack* sound like a very generic electromechanical relay. Why not something more aurally pleasing, like faking the sound of a 224 thermal flasher? Would anyone besides me notice or care?
…which makes less than zero sense, as today’s starters are vastly more efficient than ever, and today’s engines always start immediately without the extended cranking required back in the era of carburetors and primitive oils. I think it’s probably a marketing-driven race for mOaR cRAnKiNg AmPS, broadly like what happened with small-engine power ratings: more hat, less cowboy, bigger profits, in accord with applicable Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
The 1-click-of-the-handbrake trick will turn off the DRLs, but it’s not what I meant when I said it’s very easy to defeat them—using the handbrake like that also lights the brake warning telltale on the dash and causes a chime after driving a short distance. I’m actually surprised that works at all; General Motors, upon learning people were doing this, reworked their controllers to disallow it.
The preemption of the turn signal tick-tock by various other sounds (-
perimeter alert– blind spot monitor, etc) is a minor annoyance, but a real one. What’s so hard about making two sounds at once with a speaker?If I could have selectable turn signal sounds, and they included the one of that particular Tung-Sol 224, I’d pay.
Daniel, on the fickle nature of the auto-lock, I’ve found what seems to work for me: the key must be in range of the car (a couple feet) when all doors are closed before it’ll recognize that the car is “ready to be locked”.
My 2022 CX-5 will beep to let me know it’s primed. Then, I just walk away and it’ll beep again to indicate it’s locked. I also habitually make sure that my door is the last one to close, which ensures I stay close enough to trigger.
It’s especially hard to stay close when I close the motorized tailgate, because it’s so much slower than a manual one and the urge to start walking is strong.
Right, the fob is always in my pocket. Sometimes the car beeps when the last door is closed, then beeps again and locks the doors once I’ve taken a few steps away. Sometimes it doesn’t, and it seems to have something to do with the order in which the doors are closed, or the timing of closing a back door versus having closed a front door, or…something. I can’t make sense ofit, and it feels like the system isn’t broken, it’s just programmed in an opaquely odd way. I don’t like having to worry about it.
Aha! Been wondering what you replaced the Accord with. A very good replacement at that.
I’ve really been enjoying driving my manual xB since 2006, having had automatics for two decades prior to that (except of course the ’66 F100). I’m reluctant to give it up. With the low gearing and a 1.5 L engine with all of 103 hp, it means there’s plenty of rowing to do. It’s perfect for my use; if I was a commuter in lots of traffic, I’m not so sure.
But I am totally over low sedans/wagons; the xB has utterly spoiled me on that account. It is simply unnatural to have to fold oneself (especially if tall) down into a low car. I love driving Stephanie’s TSX on the rare occasions when I do, but I do not like the process of getting in and out. The xB has the easiest and most natural entry/egress ever, as it’s both tall but its floor isn’t high like most CUVs/SUVs. perfection.
If/when we replace the TSX, a Mazda CX of some sort will be very high on the list as a replacement.
Oh, couldn’t agree more on your low note.
I’ve got a low car (Astra), and I’m very much over the pain of banging my knees into my nose on entry and exit. Unfortunately, I’m stuck with it – and sometimes, IN it – for now, as the used market here is absurd.
I’ll never really understand the anti-SUV thing – seen rather, er, shall we say, commonly, in these here parts – because it’s simply a better idea for human-shaped people’s uses. And good little SUVs, like a CX-5, absolutely handle and drive as well as any old lowrider, in the real world, where very few of us are sliding just over the grip limit on our way to get milk.
My Dad bought a 2015 Mazda 6 brand new, the slight off shade of the bumpers is present in it as well, so the mismatch in color is most likely original
Right, then, that settles it—your report together with the others in this comment thread (and my own, see above in response to Matt A).
Love the choice for your new-to-you car! I have been feeling some Mazda-yearnings for awhile now, so it is good to see another positive report.
The hill-holder feature has a long pedigree, and was most associated with Studebaker, which offered it from some time in the 1930’s through the end of U.S. production. I have never driven a car with it, but I think I would like it. I think the newer versions are electrical where the old one used a ball check valve in the hydraulic system.
Having driven cars that I did not enjoy driving, I came to the conclusion (far too late in life) that life is too short to drive a car that irritates you every time you get into it. Having a car that gives you even a little bit of joy whenever you operate it is a wonderful thing, and I am glad you can now have that experience.
And yes, Mazda Mazda6 is just wrong.
I hate to admit it…as a driver of Manuel transmission cars since the time of licensing…but the hill holding thing is just fine. I have it on my BMW and even with the dual mass flywheel it makes for easy launches. I trained my son to drive manual (he too learned manual before he got his license…one of maybe 10 16-year-olds in Massachusetts in 2017) on it and it may have been one of the reasons why he took to a standard transmission so well.
It’s also a feature on Subarus. Although I think – like on the BMW – it only works while aimed uphill (it’s actually a brake feature on my car…like positioning the brakes in wet weather), not downhill like apparently on Daniel’s Mazda.
I also recently purchased a vehicle with a tinted back glass that I didn’t care for.
But I’m cheap. I watched a dozen YouTube videos, and then spent about 8 hours with plastic razor blades (I was previously unaware that they existed!), a spray bottle of Isopropyl alcohol, and a heat gun removing that 10-year-old tint. Somehow in my head that cost less than buying new glass.
As for the naming, yeah, it’s awful, but no more so than if you had bought a RAM RAM1500!
Good to know you were successful in getting the tint off w/o damaging the defroster. I’ve got a car that came to me with the back window tinted and it is now starting to bubble in a couple of spots. So far I’ve left it alone for fear of damaging the defroster and antenna and then needing to replace the glass. I was thinking about using a steamer instead of the heat gun.
Several of the videos I saw recommended a steamer but I don’t own one.
Ugh, yeah, no. They can put RAM (or HELLA) in all-uppercase on their buildings and business cards all they want, but when grownups write about it, they’re getting the customary one initial uppercase letter. Same goes for the model name, which—again, when grownups are doing the writing—is Ram 1500.
Congratulations on successful tint removal. You’ve nailed the issue, though; 8 is a lot of hours, and I reckon your time must be worth more than $0.00/hr.
Yes, my time has value. But I’m just a working man in a Skilled Trade, and 8 hours of my labor would net me far less than the cost of replacement glass + installation.
Congratulations on the new car Daniel! It should be a very nice upgrade. My brother owned a couple of Mazda’s over the last decade, although the Mazda 3s. With a manual transmission they were a ton of fun to drive and the chassis dynamics were excellent. It certainly was a big improvement in the driving experience over the Corolla (also manual shift) that he had prior to the Mazdas. They both were reliable cars as well. Red can be polarizing, but it’s nice to see a car with real colour! I like it.
It’s never easy living with a car you don’t like, so I am sure you must have been happy to see the Accord go. I have been lucky that the only ones that have fallen into that category for me have been cars were primary my wife’s vehicle. I recently went through the same experience as you of selling my old vehicle and buying a new used vehicle privately. I lucked out on both ends, in that my old one sold very quickly for a good price to a no-nonsense buyer and my new vehicle was purchased from a no-nonsense seller. I didn’t get a smokin’ deal on my new vehicle, but I was happy with how it worked considering how wonky the market is these days.
Funny you mention the CAPA parts. I learned long ago they are sub-par junk. I really my wife’s old ’99 Civic needed a fender replacement and the body shop used a CAPA fender. It was starting to rust through while the OEM fender (also repainted at the same time) looked like new. When my I had an insurance claim several years back, I insisted on OEM only parts. Despite my vehicle being a decade old, the insurance company grudgingly complied.
Here in Ontario we still have vehicle inspections, but only when vehicles change ownership. In fact, several years ago they increased the standards considerably, which resulted in shops increasing their prices. In the end though it is really more of cash grab as they are often very subjective. The mechanics tend to go for the low hanging fruit, like brakes, tires and suspension work, and gloss over things they won’t make money off of. Some are more ruthless than others. For instance, the vehicle I just purchased, the seller tried to get the safety check completed prior to the sale, but the mechanic told him it needed new rotors. I told him to leave it for me. I took it to my local [i]dealership[/i] for the safety and they passed it with no defects, and got an upgrade to the radio software for free while it was there.
Congrats on the new-to-you Mazda 6 and glad to see you back with a full-length article!
I love the Soul Red color. My 2015 Camry Hybrid is a similar color, just a little darker, called Ruby Flare Pearl. I have the hill-holder feature also and like it.
At the IIHS, we rejected nonstandard spelling, so we named cars Mazda 6, Ram 1500, Smart Fortwo and Saturn Ion, not Mazda6, RAM 1500, smart fortwo and Saturn ION.
Regarding window tinting, I’ve begun to notice that so many people in my area (Central Virginia) have darker-than-factory tinting. In some, it’s so dark that you cannot see the occupants through the side or rear glass in broad daylight. I think it’s quite dangerous — I want to see out, and I don’t want the police guessing what I’m doing inside the car.
On manual transmissions, I’ve always had at least one in the personal fleet. I suppose the ’98 Nissan Frontier will be the last however, as my next new vehicle will either be a plug-in hybrid or all-electric.
In my main copyediting gig, as Chief Editor of an international technical journal, I refuse to play along with cutesy spelling games. ams OSRAM? Nope, they’re AMS Osram. XenomatiX? No, they get one uppercase letter, at the start of their name. HELLA? Stop shouting, German sounds enough like barked orders without that; you’re called Hella.
I except names or words crammed together to make the company’s name (BlackBerry, PriceWaterhouseCooper), and once in awhile I have no choice but to play along with all-uppercase crappery—as when Continental recently showed a concept called the AMBIENC3. Somebody thought that was clever, because a 3 looks sort of like a backward E, and the hep young people today use it that way, don’t they? Also, you guys, this is really clever, because, like, the car is the “third space” after home and work, get it? Eh? Get it? Guys? Me, I think it’s a fail, because it’s the name of a well-known sedative followed by the name of a Citroën model. Setting it as Ambienc3 would have killed the lame attempt at wordplay, and I just didn’t feel like getting in an argument about it, so I rolled my eyes and set it as AMBIENC3. You are getting sleeeeeeeepyyyyyy…!
Words crammed together (BlackBerry, etc.) are a/k/a nerd capitalization.
a.k.a “wrong”. But then again, I’m a GeeZer.
Although, as far as the backward E goes, I have always been fascinated by this logo, and have sought for years a typeface that had that backward B.
Congrats on the car. Mine is as I mentioned a 2015 3 fitted with the 2L (sadly we never got the bigger engine in Europe) and 6sp manual which uses the same platform as the 6 I believe. I can confirm almost everything you said regards NVH but then it was always somewhat sportier than the equivalents – it’s probably the most European Japanese car in its class. I had it now for 8 years and the only problems I did get (e.g., auto lock shenanigans) were my fault. I have no intention to replace it anytime soon, in fact as long as running costs remain reasonable perhaps not at all. Here it is, waiting for a Danube ferry.
Nice car my sister recently upgraded from her 2.5 Mazda 6 to a CX5, they are a popular brand of car here, battery save my car shuts down all unrequired electrical systems after 5 minutes of the engine been switched off only starting the engine with the key will deactivate this economy mode, the suspension remains live throughout the car’s life only being dectivated with the suspension at service height. modern lights are great my low beam lights steer with the front wheels and can look around corners
Very nice, I’m glad you have shed your uninspiring Accord and discovered driving joy once again!
The Mazda 6 was on our long list when we started looking for another daily driver a year ago. I liked the manual transmission, Mrs DougD though it looked too sedan-ish. So fair enough it was off the list.
Mazda really seemed to have driving dynamics down in the previous decade. As you said quality isn’t top notch, and around here they are a favourite food of the rust monster. I recently helped a friend’s daughter find a older Mazda 3 and finding one that wasn’t hopelessly rusted was tough.
Great purchase, I hope you have some great road trips in it. BTW my daughter is leaving Vancouver today, she had a wonderful summer and I never had to ask you to bail her out of jail. 😉
I’ve been thinking for a while about what might replace my current 2005 Honda Civic. The shortlist is more or less down a next-generation (2006-2011) Civic or a Mazda3 of about the same vintage.
I’m tempted to go for the Mazda, but my independent mechanic says Mazda parts are expensive and hard to get. I see the latter as more problematic than the former. I’m going to have to decide how important driving enjoyment is to me.
Spot-checks inform me that some 2014 Mazda 6 parts are more costly than their 2007 Honda Accord equivalents. Others cost less, and many seem about the same. Availability doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Daniel, it’s a treat to see you back! As a long-time Mazdafarian, I was delighted by your positive take on your 6.
Very good write-up indeed – it was a very enjoyable read.