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Comments
Rust is the last thing you expect when buying a new car. Mazda just keeps on finding off the wall ways to kill their reputation. In the last 10 years they have had the tranny debacle, The HP debacle twice(one with the RX-8 and once with the Miata and now the rust with the 6.) This is too many gaffes for a car company to have in a 10 year period.
I agree with new car's 31 post 14565.
CL
If I were in the market now the 6 would be the perfect fit but now with the rust issue I would look at a Passat or Accord Coupe. The TSX is very expensive for what your paying for.
The Accord Coupe just does nothing for me. Passat was my first choice until I started reading about its reliability issues. I actually think the TSX represents pretty good value for $27k. Still, if rust weren't a factor, I'd buy the same car again.
CL
Unfortunately I would have to recommend waiting until this issue is resolved before you purchase one.
Mark. : )
It is fun to drive...tonight I was doing 95mph with 5 people in the car....God it was magnificent....and everybody was getting out of my way leaving the left lane open for me....
too good handling and the road feel that you get.
That will be the last official good thing I say about this car to anyone as an official protest until Mazda gets rid of my rust. When Mazda gets wind of my protest I'm sure they'll double their efforts into finding a fix. No need to thank me. OK, two more things, it handles like it's on rails and looks really hot. That's it,no more.
If I was a prospective buyer of a 6 I wouldn't go near any car even if it has no rust visible as it may be encRUSTed inside the seams just waiting to get out a month after you buy it and take it outside. Wait until Mazda has identified the problem and buy one with a build date after it's been rectified. Just my two cents worth which coincidentally is the current resale value of my once beloved 6.
Every car made on Earth is designed to siphon your money be it Honda, Mazda, Toyota, GM etc. To say one is clearly more reliable than another is actually pretty funny. The car manufacturer is there to make money and for you to buy more cars. They have been making cars for decades, if they wanted to make a car with no defective parts trust me they all could.
Any car I've ever had or known anybody else to have has always had something that wore out prematuraly(brake pads, clutches, CV joints, tires etc) and cost you an arm and a leg or needed a replacement part that shouldn't have died(head gaskets, trannys). People who claim to never had any problems are extremely lucky or never put any mileage on the car and had it for a couple of years.
There is no such thing as a reliable car, our money makes the automotive world go round. For all the people who claim that they had the perfect Honda there are just as many who claim to had have the perfect Ford. In reality they were far from perfect. Perception and reality are very blurred in the car industry. Owners believe what they want to believe. This rust has made me so jaded!
Unless something has changed, the Passat has always been manufactured in Germany; the Jetta, Golf and New Beetle are made in Mexico.
I drove a 98 Passat GLX for three years and I've had a 2001.5 Passat GLX for 2 1/2 years. Not a single problem with either of them.
I also have a Mazda 6s MT with 1800 miles and not a single problem with it, either. No, no rust yet (fingers crossed).
I enjoy both cars.
I don't think Honda uses GM tranny's. Gm does make a good auto tranny. Honda and Mazda make the best manual tranny's from what I hear. Doesn't BMW use GM tranny's?
Also, I hear a ticking sound whenever the wipers move up. Is this expected?
The dealer has put a lot of felt tape in the center console, but it still rattles everytime I hit a bump. Has anybody found a solution to this?
Thanks for your help.
We bought it in April and it was built 02/03.
Also checked my 2002 Protege and there is absolutely NO RUST anywhere.
Between this and the CA car tax issue, I'll probably just wait.
CL
This appears to not be a design issue, but a manufacturing one at Flat Rock. If it were a design problem, this would be happening to 6s made in Japan as well, and, as far as I know, it's not. Mazda would likely have already tested the design in Japan and simply told Flat Rock to build it the same way. Obviously, a step was missed somewhere. I have no doubt that Mazda will do whatever is necessary to take care of the people with rusting 6s. They can't have bad word of mouth spreading (as it already seems to be) just as sales are starting to pick up. And their history indicates that they will take care of the problem.
If I had a new car that was rusting already you can bet I would be unhappy. But I think it's a little overboard to be condemning Mazda for a problem that they will in all likelihood rectify.
I think Steve Jobs said this (although someone may have said it before him): "Good companies make mistakes. Great companies fix them." In the past, Mazda has been more of a "Great" company than their larger rivals in Japan. Let's wait and see what they do this time before threatening to never buy a Mazda again.
Technology sharing. GM and Honda have this "thing" going between them.
If they had to replace doors for 50% of the cars they would go belly up, they would only do that if maybe 10% were affected. Although if you complain loudly enough(which I will)they will replace doors for special cases. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The most practical thing they could do is scrape and repaint and offer everybody a lifetime warrenty against it and keep their fingers crossed that it works and most customers don't give them a hard time.
I am looking to buy an '03 6s auto in red with the sports package, sunroof and leather. But with the rust problem I have been reading here, now what do I do?
My wife and I drove an RX8 automatic and a Toyota Solara SE Sport yesterday. The RX8 is exotic, maybe too much so for my blood. The acceleration didn't impress me and it was too pricey. Then we drove the 6, just for fun (back to this later). We headed to the nearby Toyota dealership and test drove the Solara. This car seemed to be a bit oversized and bland.
After the test driving, my wife and I agreed that the 6 seemed a clear choice: fast, beautiful, sporty, hi-tech, smooth and practical. The leather also smelled very nice.
Back to my question: Now what do I do?
To throw a wrench in the mess, we are also considering a Kia Sorento EX. The pricing is very similar as well as the equipment. We are hitting the crossroad: car or suv? Any and all suggestions and/or information is appreciated!
The Sorento is a truck. And it's a KIA. Looks nice, but it's a KIA...
If the Rx-8 is too much and the 6 concerns you b/c of the rust issue, and you have a PRO, how about a Mazda3 w/2.3L engine, 17" rims, etc....?
Dinu
"There are essentially three types of coverage available that relate to product recall claims.
Product recall
Malicious tampering/accidental contamination
Product liability
Any one of these can be a stand-alone policy or an added endorsement to a company's property policy.
A product recall policy, standing alone, covers the logistical costs of a recall, such as publicity, transportation and storage of the item, repairing and returning the items, and other extra expenses necessary to carry out the recall. This type of policy will not cover the costs of lost profits and rehabilitating a product's public image, although special endorsements may be available to include lost profits coverage.
Malicious tampering and accidental contamination coverage are similar, yet distinct. Malicious tampering coverage, developed in the years since the Tylenol poisonings, has the higher limits of the two and covers criminal actions to sabotage a company's products. Accidental contamination policies cover instances where an unsafe product has been unintentionally distributed by the company itself.
Both of these cover all of the costs of a product recall, as well as lost profits and mitigating expenses. A malicious tampering policy would provide protection in a Tylenol-type situation, whereas accidental contamination would apply in such instances as the General Mills recall of pesticide-contaminated grain. Both recalls were valued at over $100 million. [Barnhart, Sky. "When Things Go Wrong, Product Recall Saves More Than Money," Insurance Journal/West, December 14, 1998.]
A product liability policy, which can be included with or separate from tampering and contamination policies, is coverage that protects only against any claims that may arise from injuries caused by a hazardous or defective product. It does not cover the logistical costs of a recall, nor the associated lost profits."
Sorry, I am a CPA who audits insurance companies, what can I say! Mazda will probably have to pay some out of its pocket, but will not likely go belly up no matter what has to be offered to us 6 owners.
darmc96: I hope you're right because as much as we all feel screwed by this issue, I wouldn't want Mazda to suffer irreperable damage because they still make the best pound for pound car on the market for driving dynamics.
The "6" was on my short list, and when one with my desired configuration magically appeared at my local dealer, all I had to do was say "where do I sign?"
The "desired configuration" was 6S, manual tranny, sport package, and Bose stereo.
As of today, such a machine is situated right outside my window.
Black, unfortunately, but it was better than getting something else, eh?
So far I am very pleased. I'll report more after the car has something over 200 miles on the clock!
-SHOV6
2003 M6, aka- "Son of SHO"
The fact is, nobody really knows the seriousness of the issue in terms of it affecting the car's durability and long-term performance. Nobody. Everyone who claims to know this will result in all sorts of problems in the future is simply guessing. As others have mentioned, this sort of issue can be found on other cars (I have it on my 90's Nissan Maxima) and it doesn't get any worse.
Mazda needs a few weeks to look at the issue, understand its roots, fix it and offer a fix to current owners. From my understanding, they just learned of the extent of the problem last week. Continuous speculation about what can or cannot be done about isn't giving much credit at all to the hundreds of dedicated engineers that worked on this car. Give them some credit and some slack and some time and I have no doubt a solution will be made available to all.
I'm still on for buying the 5 door when released. The 6 is just too great a car for the money to not keep it under consideration.
We're hoping Mazda does right by the rust problem. Mine has it, too. Since Mazda did the right thing for the RX-8 owners a few months ago it isn't hard to speculate they will do right by us.
Consider it from Mazda's side right now. They have discovered a problem in production that is going to cost them *big* in both reputation and money. While they will have to fix the existing owners' cars, their first objective will be to fix the production line. As bad as this problem is for everyone they will only make it worse if the cars flowing off the production line aren't fixed *NOW*. They have to stop the problem at the source so the probem doesn't get larger and more expenisve. That'll keep them occupied for at least a few weeks or months.
Luckily this is not a safety issue. Nobody is going to be driving down the highway and have their transmission choke, their breaks fail or have their engine catch on fire. If Mazda takes a few extra months to figure out how to fix the problem for existing owners they would actually be doing us a favor by taking their time and doing it correctly. Nobody wants to take their car in for a rust "fix" only to have the problem come back.
If it was a real safety issue then the time spent waiting for Mazda to do something would be another thing.
Frankly I've owned a lot of cars over the years. Mazdas, Hondas, Lincolns, VW's and they have all had things go wrong with them. My first Honda was a lemon and people look at me funny when I tell them this story, as if the magical Honda could ever build anything less than perfection. Ha!
The most reliable car I owned was a Mercury Tracer (Mazda 323) that went 100,000 miles on wear items alone. The second best was a Lincoln Mark VII (an American car!). The worst? A 1983 VW Jetta that decided to commit suicide one night by catching on fire in my driveway. It burnt to a crisp. But it sure was a great driving car.
Anyway, sorry to get so wordy on this post. But all cars have problems, even makes like Mazda that have been building reliable cars for years and years. Don't let it get you down.
Barryso: the 'best' car I have owned is also a '89 Merc. Tracer. Great car for the money. It ran like a clock.
Dumb question: how can you tell where the car was built? Were the 6's that were made in Japan only a certain model?
as far as your 6 goes, I feel for you. But I also trust Mazda to step up and offer a competent solution. In my experience with my Protege, Mazda did take care of my issues without nary a haggling.
Just be sure to keep in touch with Mazda via musa@mazdausa.com and your local dealer.
If buyback is the reasonable alternative, they will do that too.
Whether you own a Mazda, would like to own a Mazda, or just like going ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM... be sure to stop by and meet and greet your fellow Town Hall users! (We may even pull out some Mazda triva questions)
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