Mazda6 Tourer review

IN-CAR TECH

The navigation, entertainment and phone systems are all controlled from the central 5.8in touchscreen, or you can also control them with a control knob and a selection of buttons behind the gear lever. We found this duplication of control odd at first, but we also appreciated having the option; the resistive touchscreen is nowhere near as responsive as the capacitive models we’re used to seeing on smartphones, and we much preferred zooming in and out of maps using the knob than trying to pinch-to-zoom on the touchscreen.

The entertainment system is one of the easiest to use we’ve seen, up there with Ford’s excellent Sync system. We could browse a USB flash drive full of music by artist, album and genre, and had no problems connecting an Android phone over Bluetooth. The phone then sat in the non-slip cubby hole at the bottom of the dash (a cubby hole which is much more useful than the small door bins, which are only really any good for water bottles). The Sport model’s Bose stereo is a bit of a monster, with a massive amount of bass.

The USB audio playback system is flexible

Bluetooth audio simply let us play and pause music stored on the phone and skip tracks, but the phone application was much more powerful. We easily downloaded our phone book to the car, and could make hands-free phone calls by pressing the voice command button on the steering wheel and speaking the name of a contact; we found the voice recognition system very reliable when it came to making phone calls.

The control knob is an alternative to using the multimedia system’s touchscreen

It was slightly more hit-and-miss when it came to giving verbal instructions to the satnav. We found the system struggled particularly with numbers, but was fine with the street and town names we found. In the end we preferred to just give a street and town name and say “anywhere” on that road, then keep our eyes open. The satnav itself was as good as we’d expect from TomTom, with a clear display, voice instructions and lane guidance.

DRIVING

We found the leather seats fitted to our test car to be supportive and comfortable, and getting the right seat position was easy thanks to electric backrest, cushion and lumbar controls.

The Mazda6 was an excellent motorway car, with a quiet interior and not too much road noise, in spite of its large 19in wheels. Despite Mazda’s driving fun claims, though, we found it wasn’t a brilliant car to drive on country roads. Acceleration from our test car’s 165ps petrol engine was brisk and we had no complaints with the gearchange, but the car had a tendency to dip its nose over bumps and the firm ride meant we felt every imperfection in the road.

We found the Mazda6 generally easy to manoeuvre, mainly thanks to all the parking sensors. They seem to cover almost the whole of the car’s exterior, and would pick up low walls and kerbs; useful, as this is a very big car. The reversing camera, which is standard on the Sport model, helped when getting out of parking spaces, especially as the car’s sleek lines lead to a small rear window.

VERDICT

The Mazda6 Tourer has plenty of interior space, a huge boot, generous standard kit and impressive fuel economy. It’s also excellent on the motorway, but we felt it wasn’t quite as fun on back roads as we were expecting. Nevertheless, this is a well-designed and good-value family car with a definite touch of style.