2018 Honda Accord vs Mazda 6

What's the difference?

Twenty-five years ago I was the only kid at church who read car magazines. Nobody was interested unless the subject was a Patrol, Pajero or HiLux (it was Sydney's Sutherland Shire) and even then, they only wanted to know if they could tow a tinnie with it.

Every now and again someone would approach me and ask me for advice on a car that wasn't a ute, and then buy a car we didn't even talk about. They would politely return my magazines, though, which was nice.

Anyway, the point of that story is that one of the cars one of these nice people bought was the Honda Legend. It was a lovely thing - so quiet, so smooth, so cool. Well, not cool in the hip to the groove sense, but in the easygoing Palm Springs kind of cool.

And the point of telling you that is it turns out that they still make that car, only it's not called the Legend anymore, it's called the Honda Accord V6L. Costs less, too.

Mid-size sedans. Remember them? I don't mean premium-brand German ones, I mean the sorts of cars we all bought when we didn't want a Falcon or a Commodore. The kind of cars that used to be made here, like the Camry, Magna (yeah, I know; pipe-down granddad), or the Sigma.

But we've also had a bit of a love affair with one particular Japanese import - Mazda's 6. They were pretty, they went alright, and they were well-priced.

And yet now they're being out-sold by cars double the price. It's a weird world.

Mazda, however, won't let us give up on the 6. For the past few years, the Japanese company has steadily addressed a number of problems the 6 had (more on that in a moment), and a recent facelift came with something even better - a turbocharged 2.5-litre petrol engine.