One of our favorite summer days at Automobile Magazine is the one when we put the phone on night ring, rent Waterford Hills Raceway, and take the entire staff across town to driving school. Yes, even professional automotive journalists need an occasional tuneup, especially those of us who are retired from racing cars or who don't race them regularly and those editors who have never spent any competitive time on a track.
Mazda 6 Sedan kept Jennings out of a straitjacket.
Because this magazine's signature road test is our one-year Four Seasons review (we run ten or so each year), we have a whole fleet of cars needing miles and opinions. Therefore, we also want our art staff, our production staff, and our support staff—all of whom take our Four Seasons cars home for the night and on vacation—to know what's what behind the wheel in all sorts of vehicles.
I will admit that the whole thing makes my stomach hurt. Not only does our level of experience range from "could go pro" to "can't drive a stick," the cars we were taking to the track this year promised to be a handful. Executive editor Mark Gillies, fresh from a vintage race in England, is a lean, mean fighting machine on the racetrack, a frighteningly quick and smooth driver whose telemetry readings at Fiorano a few years ago nearly duplicated those of Michael Schumacher. He lined up the following cars for our track day: a Lotus Elise 111S, a Porsche 911 Carrera and a Boxster, a BMW M3 and a Z4 3.0 roadster, a Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG, a Ford SVT Mustang Cobra, a 50th Anniversary Corvette, our Four Seasons Nissan 350Z test car . . .
Are you getting the picture? Can you feel my indigestion? Road test coordinator Tony Quiroga was in charge of organizing the cars, and I suggested that he might want to add a nice sedan or two to calm the proceedings down a bit for the less experienced drivers. Enter the Subaru Impreza WRX STi and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. Add a Ford SVT Focus. Boys, boys, boys. Not quite what I meant by "nice sedan."
I was relieved to see the Saab 9-3, the Mini Cooper S, and our Four Seasons Mazda 6 roll up to pit row. It was an uneventful day—no off-track ex-cursions, no bent metal, no popped engines. Instead, we discovered that our managing editor—the petite terror with the red pen, Amy Skogstrom—is so fast and smooth, she could possibly go professional. And we found out that our production editor Jen Misaros—former member of the Girls Under 19 U.S. national soccer championship team and a mere wisp of a woman—could be Skogstrom's teammate.
Gillies holds court with Stuart Fowle and Tony Quiroga
The thrill ride of the afternoon was with the master of car control, Gillies, and it was take a number for better service. Right behind him was technical editor Don Sherman, but the thrill there was more of the funhouse variety, as he battered his way on opposite lock most of the way around the track. Not the fastest but certainly the sliding-est.
Despite the expertise of these two old-timers, most of the editors wanted to ride with road test coordinator Quiroga to learn the secret to his perfect line through every treacherous turn on the track.
The WRX STi rocked.
It was all fun and games, as only a day burning rubber at a racetrack can be. But we also made strides in bringing everyone on the staff up a notch in skill level. By the end of the day, one of the family had even quietly learned the art of shifting for herself, working the silken stick of the Mazda 6. This led to a discussion of the Mazda 6's all-around loveliness as a driver's ed car, as a paragon of family sedan-ness, as the deal of the year (base price $21,620), and as the prototype of how to make a thrilling sedan. At the halfway mark, this 2003 Auto-mobile Magazine All-Star still shines as brightly as it did when we gave it our unanimous vote. After eight months and many fresh experiences, we are convinced that the best family sedan for sale in America today is still the Mazda 6.
The Mazda 6 has grown in our affection. Yes, we loved it last year, but these feelings have a way of settling down over the course of using a car a lot. And we're not known for coming back months after the big All-Stars drive and taking a microscopic look at your basic family sedan, even when it looks as good as this one, dressed in the Sport package (strong front and rear fascias, deep rocker panel extensions, slick seventeen-inch five-spoke aluminum wheels, and a sporting rear wing). But this time, we were smart enough to import a 6 into our Four Seasons fleet three months ago. It has since insinuated itself in the happiest way into our everyday lives.
Shortly after it arrived, I took it on a long northern Michigan weekend with a single dog and one piece of luggage. Lou the Chesapeake Bay retriever is not a happy traveler, prone to sitting rigidly upright in the seat, agitated, for the entire duration of the drive. She is no judge of ride comfort. I, on the other hand, loved the fit and comfort of the seat, how great the instruments looked, and how every primal aspect of the driving experience (steering, brakes, accelerator, transmission) felt just right. The engine, a 3.0-liter aluminum V-6, produces 220 horsepower at 6300 rpm, which is right against its 6400-rpm redline. Torque is a substantial 192 pound-feet. That, a short first gear, and a 4.13:1 final-drive ratio move this sedan's 3278 pounds off the line with authority, although you wouldn't call 7.1 seconds from 0 to 60 mph blistering.
Still, this is some family sedan. Drive it after spending time behind the wheel of a Honda Accord, a Toyota Camry, or a Ford Taurus, and you will be facing the next grocery run and your future as a car-pooler with a lighter heart. The Mazda 6 has (as the ad jingle goes) the soul of a sports car. It is as happy, lithe, unassuming, joyous, and rewarding as a Miata.
Just about the time we took delivery of our 6 with the Sport package, so did my schoolteacher sister-in-law, Karen Currie. Karen had a 626 and wanted another. I talked her into waiting. She's sort of a pushover for her four kids, which translates into having a driveway full of cars that she has never sold, just so everyone can have something to drive. There's a tired Dodge Grand Caravan that sees service for family vacations (they drive everywhere). There's a '93 Ford Escort wagon and a '98 Escort sedan, parked between Uncle Fred's old 1977 Chevy pickup and a year-old Chevy Avalanche. And then there's the 626.
"Aunt" Karen Currie with Lou the Chesapeake.
She had seen a luminous sage green color (Sepang green) in the Mazda catalog and de-cided to order it, the first time in her five decades that she had spec'ed out a brand-new car. It was so exciting, the only options she didn't get were cargo netting in the trunk and a chrome fuel cap.
The unusual exterior color and the fact that more people ordered Mazda 6s with the Sport package and manual transmission than Mazda had anticipated left her high and dry for several months. When she went to pick it up in June, she could barely wrest it from the dealer's grasp. "Several employees at the dealership wanted it and tried to talk me out of it," she said. "The salesman told me he could have sold it three different times the day before I picked it up. Then he tried to buy it from me!"
The real test was at home, though, where the picky teenagers and college graduates waited with noses ready to flip straight up. Didn't happen. Our twenty-two-year-old nephew Jonathon gave it a big thumbs up. Nieces Susan and Dianna were relieved that Mom had done so well by them, and Dianna learned how to shift faster than her siblings before her.
And now Mom isn't letting them drive it.
Word has spread as slowly as good news always spreads. Mazda 6 sales have climbed every month since its November 2002 introduction, fueled by more than fifty international awards in addition to our All-Star. They are now rocketing. At the end of June, Mazda 6 sales were up 55 percent over May, and July saw another 50 percent jump. It is already being touted as a runaway success in Europe.
As much as we love the Nissan 350Z, we may have missed the boat when we didn't name the Mazda 6 our 2003 Automobile of the Year. In a year of tough and exciting competition, this sport sedan from the company that brought us the magnificent Miata roadster and the rotary- engined RX-7 is an unexpected breath of fresh air, the family man's answer to our rallying cry, "No Boring Cars."