On first encounter, you’re struck by how easy and intuitive the Mazda 6 is to drive. Anyone can get into this car and drive it expertly.
Drive it gently and just a softness around the steering’s straight-ahead position clouds the picture. Drive it harder, though, and a vivid picture emerges.
Mazda has long thought that the way to make a front-wheel-drive car fun to drive is to make its cornering attitude very responsive to the throttle. Provided it doesn’t lead to a rapid build-up of yaw and a trip backwards into the hedge, it's exactly what you need to keep unwanted understeer in check.
This makes the Mazda very entertaining on a fast, twisting road, where it turns in eagerly and precisely, and cornering happens in an accurate, natural fashion with each movement blending tidily into the next.
Excellent damping helps the feeling of control, and it’s hard to think of a rival car as agile and dynamically capable, but the Mazda’s 1405kg is still a hefty burden for a 118bhp 1.8 to haul around.
We noticed on the Mazda 6 press launch that the 1.8 felt more eager at low revs than the petrol 2.0, but that’s a trick of perception brought about because those roles are reversed at high revs.
The reality is that the 1.8, while smooth enough and happy to rev, struggles when asked to pull the laden Mazda 6 up a motorway incline in its highest gear (fifth). You have to downshift and work it hard, upon which it picks up speed happily so you can resume the serene cruise which the relaxed gearing allows.
We coaxed the Mazda to 60mph in 10.1sec and on to 100mph
in 33.9sec, figures which suggest that Mazda’s own claim of 11.6sec to 62mph (100km/h) sells its car short. The fact is that with a light load on board and a driver who is prepared to let the engine rev freely, even this slowest Mazda 6 is an engaging drive.
The brakes are up to the mark, too, with sensible weighting and progressive, snatch-free response.