Mazda 6

Now we can go to the Moscow Auto Show without so much anxiety. Mazda released yesterday the first official information about the new generation of their luxury sedan whose official announcement will be made at that event. Until now there’s only information about the Russian version, but it can’t change so much to the other markets. The fact is this beautiful Japanese sedan has not evolved only at the usually expected aspects, but also in its whole concept. And you can read all about it at this article.

It was already widely known that the new Mazda6 was going to be the production version of the Takeri concept-car, which was publicly presented last year at Tokyo. But the point made by this sedan can be explained starting with the changes at its measures: it got 11 cm (4,33 in) larger and its distance between axles increased in 10,5 cm (4,13 in), but it kept short with its 1,45 m (4,76 ft) of height and opulent, with 1,86 m (6,1 ft) of width. These changes reveal the intention of keeping it sporty, but much more sophisticated than the previous generation. The front end shows proudly the style started with CX-5, with a big air intake that found a nice way of getting elegant, instead of giving a brute sensation. These organic shapes can remeber  the Mercedes-Benz’s models, but they escaped of their heavy lines to combine with perfectly-sized headlights, creating a slightly taller central zone which is followed by a large hood, that gives the always-pleasant sensation of plenty of power under it. This solution continues at the sides, and it would be easy to think it abandoned the German cars to take inspiration from the Italian ones, but this thought is broke by the fact that Mazda gave an excellent Japanese touch to it.

Mazda6 also escaped from the now exausting-to-see Japanese car style of lots of agressive cuts and folds, and seems to have found an evolution of that. We can still see some contours remembering its previous generation, like the windows’ global shape, but now we can see it reached a consensus between the European and Japanese style. Now it is definitely a worldwide car, which never denies its origin, but got much more classy to now please a bigger public, instead of using a too much Eastern look. And to prove that we can return to the measure changes: it took advantage of being short and wide to get a more mature sportiness than the previous one. Besides that, we can also see some North-american influence at the length increase: the sideview shows resemblance with luxury sedans like Chevrolet Impala and the US-focused Honda Accord and Toyota Camry: the Mazda sedan features a smooth roof fall into a classical rear end with big tail lights, which take some space from the sides and got connected by a metal line. In fact, it’s very nice to see that even this little detail got its attention: its irregular shape helps it to avoid getting too much old-fashioned, like at the first Hyundai Azera.

The Mazda fans will have a pleasant déjà vu when entering the new product. Mazda6 doesn’t deny it shares platform with CX-5, but the easiest way of finding that out is the central console, which is also the same for both of them. Far away from being a bad thing, it means these cars were designed to have some connection, therefore estabilishing a luxury car family composed by the crossover, the sedan and the station wagon and the hatchback who will also come later. Even though there’s no news concerning the shapes of the console, it’s nice to see the shiny red painting at the part who divides it above and beneath the air conditioner outlets: the resemblance with polished wood gives the same idea of sophistication, but the red color takes away the ‘80s car’s impression. In fact, it’s hard to find this car too old when we can enjoy all its tecnhology package: besides the giant touchscreen which controls the entertainment system, it’s main highlights are TomTom GPS navigation, BiXenon headlamps, start/stop tecnhology and the debut of i-ELOOP, Mazda’s regenerative braking system. As almost every recent car, this sedan has a lot of technologies with focus at the efficiency improvement.

And now is the moment when we talk about Skyactiv, the brand’s new engines family. The upgraded performance comes with improvements such as high compression ratios, special plumbing to reduce combustion temperature and lightweight parts, not to mention direct fuel injection, multiple-clutch transmission, turbocharging and variable valve timing. The Russian market will have two 4-cylinder options: a 2.0 with 134 hp and a 2.5 with 189 hp – both will use the six-speed Skyactiv automatic transmission, but the smaller one will have it as an optional and use the manual one by standard, with also six speeds. The security department obviously follows this huge level, and presents intelligent headlights, blind spot monitoring, trajectory deviation warning and Smart City, a system which brakes the car by itself if the driver doesn’t react to an imminent collision at 30 km/h (18 miles) or less. It was announced that the US-market information will be published in a few days. Fuel mileage and emissions information weren’t presented until now, but Mazda will start the deliveries still at this year.

05/08/2012 update: Yesterday the station wagon was released, still at the Moscow Auto Show. And, as the sedan, the design is one of its many qualities. It’s impressive to see how that casual but elegant style didn’t lost anything when had to be used at the kind of car whose form usually makes more concessions to the function – it still looks large as the luxury car have to be, but doesn’t look excessively large, like the American wagons until the 1990s. This excellent impression came because of the attention to some details that when suppressed give a terrible result. One example is the rear doors, which have different design from the ones used at the sedan so the windows could be changed to the best possible design without any problem. The “fifth door” is also surely exclusive, but its big inclination was decisive to maintain the overall style. However, a nice detail is that Mazda has found how to highlight the connection with the sedan even at the section where those car bodies most differ: the tail lights are the same, so as the metal bar above them. Speaking of the trunk, it’ll surely have different measures from the sedan’s, but they still aren’t known. Besides that, all the rest is shared between the two cars.