2018 Hyundai Sonata vs Mazda 6

What's the difference?

Hyundai's Sonata is part of that fading market segment - the medium family car. If you're not the Toyota Camry, your sales are in the hundreds per year (the hitherto Australian-built Camry slaughters all-comers), with the Sonata clocking up around 800 so far in 2017.

Hyundai sticks with this car, like David sticking with throwing stones at Goliath, to ensure that it has a vehicle in its dealerships to suit buyers in every segment.

The Sonata was relaunched here a few years ago as a far better car than any of its previous namesakes. In fact, my family had one for a year as a long-termer and we really quite liked it. Big and capable, it was only missing the design flair that following Hyundais inherited.

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.