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Like I said before, I anticipated little first year bugs, but honestly, who would have expected rust?
The Civic is a nice little car, but if you want a similar driving experience to the 6 and a small size compare it to the Mazda3.
How the 3 and the 6 ride has to be a seat-of-the-pants experience, it can't be explained clearly in words. Just sitting in them speaks volumes, the richer materials and high-tech features not offered on other cars is a main selling point.
Mazda's new small cars offer great value, reliability, and operating economy. Their EPA ratings are always lower than what prudent owners usually get. Comparing the Mazda3 to the Civic EX, I would happily accept 1mpg or 2 mpg less considering the much higher quality and content.
I have the previous model, the Protegé, which I bought after test driving the 2001 Civic EX, because the Pro offered better quality, more rear seat room, close-to Civic fuel economy, and better cabin materials. The new 3 is closer to more expensive cars.
fowler3
Mazda will go as far as making a US version of the 6 while the rest of the world gets the regular 6. I'm not happy. Mazda is getting like Honda 1998(we have to American-ize are some of our brand to be acceptable to the American public.) I just hope Mazda knows what they are doing so they don't have to have Ford save them 5 years down the line again. I might just buy a compact car after I am done with my Acura CL. The mid-size offerings from the Japanese are like full-size to me now. The mitsubishi Galant used to be a little car now its the titanic.
I was shocked though the decesion to super-size the 6 in 2007 was by a Japanese executive who works for Mazda. A super-sizing would seem like classic Ford trying to ruin Mazda again and take Mazda's young core buyer out of the equation.
Thats the thing that bothers me Mazda might take out their core buyer if they super-size the 6. To explain further when you super-size a car its takes sportiness out of the cars exterior. If Mazda makes the next generation 6 as bland looking as a Camry it won't sell now matter how much room it has. I just hope Mazda doesn't Americanize the next gen 6 stylistically like Honda and Toyota have done with the current Camry and Accord.
On a positive note, I do think Mazda needs the mid-size SUV that the Japanese Executive who works for Mazda was talking about in the Wall Street Journal article I was reading tonight. I have said that time and time again that Mazda needs a mid-size SUV that has nothing to do with Ford. If Mazda can build a Car Based SUV with their reliability they will sell them off the lot like crazy.
As for the large SUV I'm not much of a large SUV kinda guy.
I kinda knew Mazda was going to enlarge the 6 in a few years but not super-size. I really wanted to look at a next generation 6 but if they are going to super-size I might stay away.
Also in the article the Japanese Executive(I;m really not good with Japanese names, sorry) he said he wants Mazda products to cater more to the NA market. I hope Mazda doesn't give us different version of the rest of their cars in the future than say what Europe is getting. That wouldn't be a good idea. I wouldn't happy if Mazda gave us a stlistically different version of the 3 than Europe is getting. Of course I like the Protege better.
BTW, I saw a young girl yesterday(mid 20's/early 30's)driving a Sepang Green 6 w/spoiler and sport grille today. Please Mazda don't lose that buyer when you super-size the 6 but I think they will. The Altima used to be a college car and now its not because its too big in size for the college crowd.
The Japanese are usually on target with product decesions. Mazda's past fortunes were very controlled by Ford during Mazda's sorry mid 90's campaign so I could be wrong about the whole supersizing. Maybe Mazda has something up their sleeve that I don't know about. The next generation 6 has to be good stylistically to sell well(I'm 100% sure about that.)
Or who knows, maybe they'll keep the 6 as it is, and offer this Ford Futura clone as a Mazda9....
At the rate that Toyota and Honda are supersizing their "midsize" cars, by 2010, the Camry is going to be bigger than a 75' Cadillac Deville.
I don't think any of us were comparing them. I'm passing on the Mazda6 because I've always wanted a Mustang and the next gen is too hard to resist. My original, and practical new father type, list was narrowed down to a Mazda3 s sedan, Mazda6 i or s sedan, or a 5-door SVT Focus.
The decision to buy a Mustang was made even harder now that we have a three month old at home and really shouldn't be buying a two-door sports car according to the rules of society.
I'm already bending over backwards to put him in the car seat which resides in the back seat of our 96 Civic coupe. It's not as bad as it sounds but I might as well have a great car that I love (I absolutely despise the Civic by the way) if I'm going to continue practicing the two-door twist.
Also, is it me, or is the new Altima (just released this year) a bit smaller-feeling inside than the last one (even in the front seat)? Maybe they made the interior trim a bit "puffier" when they "upgraded" them?
Screw society, they don't pay your bills, only you are responsible for your fun and you only life to live. So if that is what your heart wants, go for it. Strap a babyseat to the backseat if you want
"Also, is it me, or is the new Altima (just released this year) a bit smaller-feeling inside than the last one (even in the front seat)? Maybe they made the interior trim a bit "puffier" when they "upgraded" them? "
Colors have a bit to do with that perception. It could be the dark plasti-wood appliques. I believe it's the upper center dash which is a bit higher and is contributing to that feeling.
If no one buys it, then there would never be 2nd year. Someone has to buy a first year car.
Some manufacturer's thinking on this is, starting the first year models out with better components/quality so the media doesn't hammer them and give them bad review's. Since most automotive reviews are written on the first model batch, this can lead to positive/negative perceptions for the next few years. Rarely will a 2nd year model be tested, (3rd in some cases), and it's usually not till the 3rd year, or (cosmetic touch-up) that they'll retest the same vehicle again.
That's the plan. It's funny to hear people gasp and see them smirk when I tell them what I'm buying next. Like it's somehow going to be bad for the kid or something.
"Strap a babyseat to the backseat if you want "
I might opt for the vert if I can swing the payments just to make that task a little easier when the weather permits.
ANT 14: The Accord started to be a good selling car in its 3rd generation of bodystyle(86-89.) To me Toyota forced the hand with super-sizing Japanese Mid-size cars with the 92 Camry. I really liked the the size of the 94-97 Accord and the 03-04 Mazda 6. Right after those generations Accord's and 6's we get more super-sizing. Boring in my opinion.
And they will continue to grow. As they grow, other cars will slot under them. Example, Toyota introducing the Echo, to fit the slot the previous Tercel used. Or how Chevy placed the Aveo, since the Cobalt (Cavalier replacement) will be a bit bigger... And we have seen the Malibu grow quite a bit, and it's common sense the Impala will grow bigger as well.
It's all part of evolution.
BAGGS,
I will always stick to my mother's philosophy of raising kids... "I had YOU, YOU did NOT have me". Which I totally agree with now, and to think... back then and even now, all my parents ever had were/are 2dr RWD coupes.
But I agree. Sometimes they cheap-out in later years. But I find it's best on judge on a case-to-case basis. Usually, they don't replace parts in the second model year, as they're usually busy replacing bad parts, unless it's an easy change, like using a slightly cheaper plastic or colorant.
Of course, on others, they don't bother changing at all, like the a-pillar trim on first-generation Saturns. The original and every replacement part broke at exactly the same places: around the plastic posts that snapped into the a-pillar. You'd think they'd just get someone to file down the sharp edges in the tool (even if by hand or with a moto-tool) so those posts wouldn't break-off so easily, but they never did.
Maybe it is because Americans have gotten so wide in the beam! New theaters have wider seats, airlines are making seats wider, so cars are following the trend. Low-carb diets take time, in fact, tests have shown that the most weight is lost in the first six months; after that, low-carb diets do no better than any other diets.
Face it, Americans are over-weight, even those not obese. It's also surprising to read, here, how many compact car buyers are 6-feet or more tall.
fowler3
I HOPE gas prices go through the roof and all of the people with SUVs get hit HARD in the pocketbook because I see way too many of them on the road being used as commuter vehicles with one person in them. Yes, it's a free country and you should be able to buy what you want to buy, but the SUV thing has gotten out of hand. Lexus SUVs, Porsche SUVs, VW SUVs....I need to go barf right now.
If gas prices get a lot worse, SUV resale values are going to drop and many people will be screwed if they try to sell them. I heard gas prices in some parts of California are at $3.00 per gallon. Good. I can handle it if that's what it's going to take to get some of these fat butt SUVs off the road.
Happy I have a 6i manual......
To me its up to the parents to lead the children to eat healthy. Instead kids are getting diabates and being overweight at a young age. Its just ugly. I guess the parents can't cook anything and like fast food.
Why do you have to have 300+ hp cars? 200 is plenty! Where speed limits never exceed 75 mph, what do you need those horses for? And SUVs: what's the attraction there? I heard of Hummer buyers getting shocks the first time they gas up because the darn thing is getting like less than 10 mpg. There is a reason why GM does not put EPA mileage on the sticker of those H2s!
It's time to bring on those hybrids! (Isn't ironic that Lexus is coming out with a hybrid SUV?)
Like ANT14 said car makers will slot cars under their growing mid-size offerings so I just may look at a Mazda 3 or something like that the next time I buy a car. I have no use for all that room in current Japanese Mid-size offerings.
At $3 per gallon, those fools could be paying more for gas per month than my car payment.
His point was, (going from a Saturn SL to an Expedition) "well I'm still filling up only once a week, just like I used to in my old Saturn".... My counterpoint, "Your comparing approx. 12 gallon capacity to 28, they do this so you only have to go once if so lucky".
And since many buy gas with their charge card, some may see it as just number's, instead of actually understanding how much of it, it really is.
Time for Weight Watchers. If you have the cash, you should be able to steal large SUV's this fall/winter.
But seriously folks,if the Gulf is not stabilized and Venezuela doesn't sort out its political problems, we may be in for a long siege, and the hot vehicle might very well become ---the Prius & it siblings. One part of me would really enjoy seeing the SUV behemoths and Hummers rusting in the driveways of owners who no longer can feed them.
The notorious truck-mileage loophole is absolutely unconscionable. An easy way to modestly increase our national security would be to get rid of it. Unfortunately congress and the present administration,for all their unceasing talk about national security, haven't been willing to bite the bullet and challenge the cluster of interest groups resisting this. Of course the interest group in question is not the rose breeders association, but Detroit and those industries (and unions) dependent on it & and linked to it; not easy people to blow off. They will resist to the last--and this administration will back them--while the Japanese do another number on what remains of the US car industry. They will develop the technology and produce the products this market needs (as they did in the 1970s) while Detroit spends its time fighting for the SUV and the administration tries to tell us that the solution to all our problems is drilling out the Arctic Wildlife Preserve. I sometimes don't know whether to laugh or cry.
There's more to national security than beefing up screening at airports and finding middle eastern despots in holes in the ground or homicidal politico-religious fanatics in mountain caves. Finding them will make me feel more secure, but significant rises in petroleum prices ($2.50 gasoline) will make me feel vastly more insecure. Rapid price rises could also, by the way, interfere with the recovery from the last recession--might even tip us back into recession. That will really do wonders for our collective sense of security, won't it?
This post started as a humorous comment and ended with a rant. Got away from me.Sorry people.
Many people who bought SUVs can afford any price for gas, no matter how high it gets, and say so. They will be the last to give in. It's the middle-income families who leased or bought used SUVs who will be hurt when they can't dump them.
What is already happening in California, and other states where prices are above $2.00 a gallon, stealing gas is up 60%. By drivers filling up at self-serve stations and convenience stores and driving off without paying. This will definately make it more expensive for the rest of us when we have to go inside and pay first, taking more time, making us late, etc.
When the majority starts complaining louder to Washington than the lobbiest -- watch the government take action. If SUV owners were taxed on weight and hp you would see far fewer on the roads and more smaller cross-over SUVs.
The Mazda3 Hatch is the forerunner of many more on drawing boards and in the works. The first hatchbacks had many shirtcomings, which Mazda's current offering has overcome. I know this is the 6 board, but a similar model 6-hatch, not the wagon, would be good.
fowler3
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/displayHomepage.action?
The more I think about it, rising petroleum costs might be the largest short-term factor working to choke off an economic recovery. But the biggest long-term threat is the state of government finances. The red ink currently being spilled will come back to haunt us in the form of higher interest rates--poison for the economy. Maybe even a collapse of the dollar which would produce runaway prices on everything imported and a global economic crisis. When the US sneezes the whole world gets influenza.
Dick Cheney and others in the administration are still believers in the "voodoo economics" (Bush Senior's phrase) that hold that deficits don't matter. I realize there's a whole theology that surrounds that idea, but should we ground our economic national security on it? Paul O'Neill, the only person in the administration who wasn't a believer, was excommunicated. I never thought I'd see the day when the Democrats (!) became the party of fiscal responsibility, but I felt infinitely more (economically) secure with economic policy in the hands of Bob Rubin. It was one of the areas in which the Clinton administration shone--and not an unimportant one.
Ok, times have changed and we now face different threats. No question, resources have to be devoted to the "War on Terror". I don't object to hunting Bin Laden and Co., making airports more secure, protecting the frontiers better, etc. etc. etc.; but economic security is an important part of national security, and the current bunch is doing a terrible job. Their economic policy is in disarray and they don't seem to have their eye on the ball. They don't even seem to care much. I think they are driving us over a cliff. Worse, I don't think there's anyone at the wheel. Who's our present Treasury Secretary? Now let me see... What is that fella's name? Whoever is elected in 2008 will have inherited an awful mess that will take more than four years to clean up.
We and the Europeans have adopted different approaches to the oil-supply/price problem, which is fundamental to the economic health of the West as a whole. They, by and large, have relied on fuel taxes to hold demand in check--and what one sees on the roads there reflects it. We tried the Cafe route, probably on the grounds that it would be safer here--where the public is more tax averse--to make the mechanism of fuel conservation as untransparent as possible; in other words regulation instead of taxes up-front. This hasn't worked because of the truck loophole which, at the greatest height of its absurdity, gave us the...Hummer.
Considering the political landscape of this country, regulation instead of taxes was probably the right choice, but unless the loophole is closed we have no policy and are reduced to trying to react quickly to the big shocks periodically imposed by changes in market forces. Back in the 1970s the result was the instant obsolescence of the American aircraft-carrier type car and the beginning of a relative decline in the US auto industry. We're now heading in the same direction, but instead of 90 foot Impalas it will be SUVs immobilized in the driveway. This is not the way to run a railroad. The only hope I've seen in the press is the application of hybrid technology to the whole fleet, SUVs included. But we'll have to buy that technology in since our own industry has been too conservative and undynamic to create and develop it. The hydrogen car seems like a dream that will have to be deferred until the second half of the century. But we'd better get going on any and all of these alternatives. God has played a cruel joke on the human race by putting most of the petroleum under the most despotic, unstable and actually or potentially turbulent countries in the world. The sooner we can detach from a petroleum based economy the better. As soon as we do, Saudi Arabia can sink back into the sands and it won't matter to us so much. I long for the day.
Whew. I realize I've totally hijacked this thread with these rants--so I'm going to shut up before Pat the Host orders me to. I won't say another word about this.
The Chinese Industrial Engine is going to change all this if we do not do something about it fast!
Their massive increases in imports of petroleum is going to make our (and the worlds) current gas prices skyrocket in the future.
They don't play the game the way we do. If our government does not take action soon, we all will be riding bikes. They export billions of dollars in goods while putting uncontrolled tarrifs on imports.
When was the last time you have seen Wisconsin Cheese being served in a Beijing restaurant?
Not to many Harley-Davidsons cruising down the back roads Shang-ai either.
The last time I saw cheese in a Chinese restaurant was never. Many East Asians cannot physically tolerate milk products as adults,and generally avoid them. So, apart from Mongolians, who were herders, it's generally not a part of the cuisine. A Japanese exchange student who lived with us for awhile finally confessed to us after living here for a number of years that at the beginning she couldn't stand the smell of us. The cheese smell is, apparently, in our pores, and can be revolting... Still, there's nothing like a 5 year old aged Wisconsin cheddar. Not easy to find anymore. I hate to say it, but most of what we produce is crappy, tasteless so-called cheddar and Colby for the mass market.
To me that would be a very smart move to do that.
Maybe they can make the MX-6 on a shortened next generation Mazda 6 platform. Therefore the young people still have something to drive thats not so big.
As for fuel I have no use what so ever for an SUV and the heavy gas prices. Thats an expense I don't need.
Personally, I would like to see graduated drivers licensing by vehicle weight class, sort of like how we do it for trucks. IOW, a "regular" drivers would only be good up to a certain weight of vehicle. This would discourage people who don't really need these heavy vehicles from getting them, and discourage the makers from buidling them.
Do I really need to say something here?
Note to Mazda: The 5-door is on dealer's lots already, could we please have an update on your web site for Build and Inventory on the 5-door? Please don't make me call my local dealer to try to get inventory info out of them, as I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick.
And one last shot on the potential oil crisis: I was happy to see so many of you who feel as I do that the presence of those large SUV's on our highways is such a travesty. There is NO need for any commuter or soccer mom to have a 5000 pound behemoth to transport a couple of kids or get a few bags of groceries. All those owners are doing is guaranteeing that we will continue to be dependent upon imported oil for decades to come. For the record, my E320 gets 27/28 mpg on trips with a fully loaded trunk, etc. Show me an SUV or pickup truck that is even close to that... And I am traveling in much greater comfort than any of them!
And our other car is a Matrix getting over 20 mpg around town and it can carry lots of cargo..
A friend of mine suggested that only real trucks (not SUV's or PU's) or buses should be allowed to have engines of more than 100 HP. There are days when I agree with him when I see 2 or 3 of those Hummers sucking gas by the tankful. [Sermon off]
Let's return to the Mazda6 now, and pursue these other thoughts elsewhere -- they don't belong here.
I don't like SUVs, why do you? is alive and well on the SUVs board - feel free to hop over there and join in all of the fun those folks are having! :-)
Thanks - I appreciate your understanding.
Does anyone have a firm heads-up on when the hatch and wagon will be at the showrooms?
As pointed out a year ago when everybody said the 6 was going to be a flop Mazda used to do Honda like packaging with their cars(DX, LX, and ES) trims. Now its just I and S trims for the 6 sedan and I don't know how the 6 wagon and 6 hatch trim lines work(a little too early to tell.) I think the DX, LX, and Es trims on the 626 were better than the option package choices on the 6.
fowler3