Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £14,891 to £20,400
High levels of refinement, good to drive, low running costs.
Gearchange not as slick as rivals, some road noise, poor ride quality with 18" wheels.
Punchy, refined diesel is pick of the 6 range.
Since Mazda is owned by Ford you would expect the new 6 to share a large number of its oily bits with the similarly sized Ford Mondeo.
This, after all, is a tried-and-tested method of saving development time and money. So when Ford created a brand new chassis to underpin the Mondeo and S-Max MPV, it naturally offered it to its Japanese bedfellow.
Mazda declined.
Then, a year on from launch, Mazda knew it needed to replace its ageing 2.0-litre diesel. Ford had just the ticket: an all-new 170bhp 2.2-litre co-developed with Peugeot.
Again Mazda politely refused. 'We knew we could do it better', explained one senior exec.
The all-new 2.2-litre diesel is the fruit of the brand's labour and is packed full of technology and new thinking.
The compression ratio, for example, is far lower than you would expect for a diesel: this helps engineers produce more measured and efficient combustion. The firm has also gone to the trouble of creating its own particulate filter that it says offers significant efficiency and maintenance benefits.
Sounds complicated and a whole lot of work for a firm not famed for diesel. So was it worth it or has pride got the upper hand? Read on to find out.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mazda Mazda6 Estate
wrote on 15 10 2006
wrote on 20 07 2006