2017 Mazda 6 vs 2018

What's the difference?

The Mazda6 GT wagon looks stunning and is great to drive, but it doesn’t have the cargo capacity of rivals such as the Passat and Superb. As for the GT grade, I’d be looking at the Touring instead – it’s about $5K less and you’re only really missing out on the proximity key, which is great, but not $5K great. Good on you for considering a wagon, too. It’s the thinking person's alternative to an SUV.

The Mazda 6's competition is not nearly as good looking, and none have that smooth 2.5-litre turbo to get them whistling along with such little fuss.

You can buy a Camry and enjoy the solid drive, or a Kia Optima and enjoy the, erm, exclusivity. Or the turbo Hyundai Sonata, which is also somewhat exclusive.

The GT is a terrific car, and it's terrific because of its smooth, powerful and calming engine. It's a shame that the engine is only available in the top end of the range, though...

The Mazda6 sedan is a good-looking car, and even as a wagon it’s appealing, with that sloping roofline, those curvaceous wheel arches and long bonnet. The shape isn’t new either – sure there have been updates, but this model came out in 2012 and it doesn’t look out of date. 

Can you tell it’s a GT from the outside? No. Well yes, but only by the wheels and headlamps – the GT has 19-inch alloy wheels and LED headlights, but so does the top-of-the-range Atenza.

Inside, the Mazda6 GT wagon’s stylish cabin has a premium feel with leather seats and an excellent fit and finish. All the touch points throughout the cockpit are soft or padded, and all the controls, from the paddle shifters to the climate buttons, are perfectly placed and feel refined.

There are spots where the cabin is showing its age – that head-up display once seemed cool but now appears dinky and the display is tiny and antiquated by Volkswagen and Skoda standards these days.

How long is the Mazda6 wagon? It might not look like it, but the wagon is shorter end-to-end than the sedan. The dimensions don’t lie; the wagon is 4800mm long, the sedan is 4865mm.

Compared to its rivals, the Mazda6 wagon is 110mm longer than the Subaru Levorg and 33mm longer than the Passat wagon, but 71mm shorter than the Mondeo wagon and 61mm shorter than the Superb wagon.

Don’t be fooled, though, longer doesn’t mean it has a bigger cargo area - all will be revealed in the practicality section below.

The 6 is a seriously good-looking car, and I mean that in a head-turning, wolf-whistling kind of way.

Mazda's Kodo design language rarely disappoints. Here in the 6, the facelift is similar in nature to the CX-5 - slimmed headlights, simplified shapes front and rear, but a muscular, lithe profile.

Changes in the cabin have been more noticeable, because unlike the exterior design, Things Needed To Happen. The old interior wasn't bad, but Mazda had this terrible habit of making its cabins dark and gloomy.

A simple thing like sending some of the indicator lights up into a unit with the rear vision mirror significantly reduced the clutter on the centre console. There's a distinct Audi influence in the way the horizontal stacked sections make the cabin feel wider and more airy, too. Just about everything has been changed, except the steering wheel and the shifter, and it's worked.

Nobody buys a wagon by accident. You get a wagon because you’ve preempted regular situations when you’re going to have to carry stuff. Lots of stuff. Wagons are basically utes with a roof for people that don’t get dirty.

So not much point in getting a wagon if the cargo capacity doesn’t meet your requirements. The Mazda6 wagon has 506 litres of boot space, while the sedan version has 474 litres. Yes, that sounds like the wagon is small, but the big hatch opening and being able to fold the seats down opens up a 1648-litre cargo area.

The Passat wagon isn’t as long as the Mazda6 wagon, but its cargo capacity is 650 litres, or 1780 litres with the seats folded flat. The Superb has an enormous 660 litres or 1950 litres with the second row folded. The Levorg’s cargo area is smaller than the Mazda’s, with 489 litres, and so is the Mondeo’s, with 488 litres.

Cabin storage is good with two cup holders up front and two in the back. There’s also a large centre console storage bin and bottle holders in the doors, too.

As for humans, I’m one of those (but a tall one at 191cm) and I can sit behind my driving position with about 20mm of space. Headroom is also good back there.

The Mazda6 wagon’s coupe styling looks great, but the rear door opening is smaller because of it and I noticed this meant bending more to put my toddler into his car seat.

Front-seat passengers score a pair of cupholders with a neat cover for when they're not in use. The centre console is on the smaller side, but a decent phone cubby under the climate controls makes up for that. The fold-down centre armrest features a pair of cupholders, too, plus there's a slot to hold a phone or small tablet upright, and a small lidded tray with a pair of USB ports.

There is plenty of room for front-seat passengers, and even those in the rear won't run into any headroom trouble. There is plenty of leg room, too, as well as decent foot room. Smaller folks will be okay in the middle seat.

Boot space isn't too bad, at 474 litres (VDA) with the rear seats in place.

The GT is third in a four-model line-up that starts with the $32,940 Sport and ends with the $50,090 Atenza diesel. The GT is the first in the range to feature the turbocharged petrol engine, which is kind of sad, because a turbo-powered Sport would be brilliant.

Starting at $43,990, you get 19-inch alloys, active LED headlights, black or white leather seats, power heated and folding mirrors, power windows, electric seats, an 11-speaker Bose stereo, auto headlights and wipers, dual-zone climate control, leather steering wheel and shifter, sat nav, keyless entry and start, active cruise control, adaptive headlights, front and rear parking sensors, heated front and rear seats and a space-saver spare.

Mazda's 'MZD Connect' multimedia system is accessible through the dash-mounted touchscreen and a console-mounted rotary dial. And my usual whinge about the lack of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto now has a happy-ish ending - by the end of 2018, you'll be able to retrofit both. Not perfect, but even older Mazdas dating back to 2014 are upgradeable.

The Mazda6 GT wagon is available with a diesel or the 2.5-litre petrol engine which was in our test car. Producing 138kW of power and 250Nm of torque, the engine is smooth, quiet and has plenty of oomph.

This is a front-wheel-drive car and the transmission is a six-speed automatic. 

Mazda slaps a 'SkyActiv' badge on just about everything, so it will be no surprise to find that this engine bears the name. The GT's 2.5-litre four cylinder spins up 170kW and 420Nm - the same figure as the CX-9, but with a quite a few less kilos to haul.

The 6 is front-wheel drive, and power reaches those wheels via a six-speed automatic. I didn't think a six-speed 'box would be enough, but it didn't bother me at all.

Towing capacity is rated at 550kg unbraked and 1550kg braked.

Mazda says the wagon with the 2.5-litre petrol engine and six-speed auto should use 6.6L/100km when driven on a combo of urban, country and city roads. Our car spent most of its life with us in the city and our trip computer was saying we were averaging 10.2L/100km. 

Mazda says that the 2.5-litre turbo drinks 91RON (yep, the cheaper stuff) at the rate of 7.5L/100km.

My week with the car in mostly urban driving yielded a disappointing 11.3L/100km. That might have had something to do with my right foot, but that's classified information.

Mazda’s ‘thing’ is making cars that are fun to drive – the company takes this seriously, and when a new car is launched they devote a lot of time explaining the pains they went to in making the car engaging to pilot.

And the effort seems to pay off; Mazdas really are good to drive, and the Mazda6 is no exception.

Steering is smooth, well-weighted and accurate, the engine is responsive and has a sport mode (which is actually sporty), and the six-speed auto gets the drive to those front wheels well. There were times, though, that the front wheels would lose traction - especially from a standing start on a hill.

Handling is good and the ride is comfortable, too. Although the lower profile tyres on the GT grade (225/45 R19) do mean you’ll feel the bumps and cracks in the road more than the thicker-walled tyres on the lower grades.

And finally, a wagon will almost always be better to drive than an SUV, and that's because it has a lower centre of mass and that gives it superior handling. Just like a car. Because that's what it is.

Okay, I feel I've misled you a little, way back at the beginning of this story.

I feel like I may have intimated that shoving this turbocharged engine under the bonnet meant a transformation to something a bit hotter. After all, it has a lot more torque than the fondly remembered 6 MPS, and isn't all that short of that monster's power figure either.

It's nowhere near a replacement for the 6 MPS, though. In fact, it's better than that.

Mazda got out of performance cars a long time ago, preferring to just pretend there's another RX-7 on the way (that story always surfaces in April for some reason). The new turbo engine isn't a huffing, puffing performer. It's actually borderline dull. It isn't peaky or laggy, but super-quiet and super smooth.

You can surf along on the torque, overtake with far less planning and buttock-clenching.

Adding the turbo engine to the 6 fixes what was an extremely competent car looking for a good engine. The standard petrol in the lower-spec cars is adequate, but it's not really up to the task of swift, effortless progress.

This turbocharged unit actually calms the driving experience because you know you can surf along on the torque, overtake with far less planning and buttock-clenching.

The rest of the car? Well it's as lovely and easygoing as ever. The new car is stiffer than before, and, like most Mazda updates, is filled with detail changes that add up to a significant improvement.

It's so much quieter, too, with just a bit of racket from the GT's bigger wheels over coarse surfaces. Most of the suspension noise from the older cars is gone.

Passengers really liked the interior of the 6, with its broader, airier feel, and in Soul Red with the white interior, it looks properly classy.

The 6 arrives with six airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, high beam control, lane-departure warning, lane-keep assist, blind-spot monitoring, forward and reverse AEB, reverse cross-traffic alert, a reversing camera and traffic-sign recognition.

ANCAP awarded the Mazda a maximum five stars in 2012.

The Mazda6 wagon is covered by Mazda’s three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. Servicing is recommended every 12 months or 10,000km and is capped at $305 for the first service, $333 for the second, $305 for the next, then $333 and back to $305.

Mazda recently increased its long-standing three-year warranty to five years/unlimited kilometres, which was odd, because at the car's launch in May, they said three years was plenty. Still, I'm not arguing with the change.

Roadside assist, sadly, is not part of the deal. It costs between $99 and $109 per year.

Service intervals are a bit close at 12 months or 10,000km, whichever comes first. Prices are capped for the first five years, alternating between $312 and $341 for a total of $1618 for the first 50,000km.