Mazda 6 (2013 - 2022) 2.0 SE-L Nav 4d Owner Review

Excellent family car for our needs. Admittedly the saloon bootlid can be a bit of an inconvenience, but the opening is decently shaped for what it is and the boot itself wide and deep, which is useful when carrying a pram and the like. The pre-facelift infotainment is showing its age but is easy to operate thanks to the rotary knob. Generous leg room/office space for back seat passengers, but six-foot passengers (or thereabouts) won't appreciate the sloping roofline. I carry them very rarely though, so the svelte looks make up whatever complaints they might have. Handling is tidy, ride around the "informative" point on the plushy-crashy spectrum and performance adequate by my standards, if not mind-blowing. No turbo means comparatively little low-rev torque, which in turn makes the engine either delightfully linear or frustratingly sluggish depending on your viewpoint. The manual gearbox is wonderful to use though, and fuel economy is impressive since there's no turbocharger to force-feed the engine when not necessary. I've averaged 48 mpg over about 20,000 miles (there's a mild brake-energy recuperation system available, but my car hasn't got that); the worst I've got from a tank of fuel is 40 mpg in urban-heavy going and the best is 54 mpg, which is pretty nice for a car five metres long. Can't imagine doing that in a similarly sized petrol SUV, that's for sure. Annoyingly, there are no bag hooks in the boot (you can DIY some from e.g. VW group spares), no levers to drop the rear seat in the cabin (two in the boot) and the boot lock is electronic-only, so if your battery dies there's no way to open it before the battery is resolved first. Other than that, I've been extremely pleased with the Six.