Review by Brendan McAleer, photos by Brendan McAleer and Autos.ca staff
All things considered, it really would be best if the Mazda6 pictured above was brown.
Sure, the swelling lines of the ’6 would look rich and luscious in a deep metallic colour, in the spirit of the
brownnaissance
that’s sweeping through the auto industry (Porsche, BMW and
Mercedes-Benz are suddenly fond of using the hue in press shots) – but
that’s not what’s behind my reasoning. No, brown would be appropriate
because what we’ve got here is the oldest taste-test in the book:
Vanilla versus Chocolate.
Luckily, the Accord happens to be the right colour, same as my washer
and dryer; possibly the same as your iPod. So, an apparent contest
between an appliance and a four-door Miata – should be an easy victory
for the Mazda, right? Not quite.
Style/Design
While the compact car market remains Canada’s largest volume segment in
terms of vehicle sales, buying a mid-sized family car isn’t quite the
emotionless choice that selecting an A-to-B commuter can be. Sure, you
need some everyday four-door essentials, but this is a big purchase and
come Sunday morning, you’ll probably be proudly washing it in the
driveway with the kids.
The folks who buy, lease or finance a mid-sized family sedan are
likely to bring it home, park it out front and surreptitiously check to
see whether the neighbours are peeping through the curtains enviously.
You want something practical, but also something you can be proud of.
Almost immediately, you have to hand it to Mazda’s styling team for
sculpting probably the best-looking mid-sized car on the market bar the
Ford Fusion. Some of the long-hood-short-deck profile is due to
packaging considerations for the Mazda’s high-compression engine (more
on that later), but you’d be hard-pressed to find an angle from which
the Mazda6 doesn’t look the proverbial million bucks.
Riding around the tony neighbourhood of West Vancouver, where 911s
are more common than Vee-Dubs and Audi/BMW ownership is practically a
compulsory city bylaw, my GT-trim tester still manages to turn a few
heads. It looks more expensive than it is.
In comparison, the Accord aims not to offend anyone’s palate too much
and mostly succeeds. Sport trim adds 18-inch alloy wheels, a subtle
rear spoiler and chrome exhaust tips by way of decorating a
conservative, squared-off shape.
And yet, somehow it all works. The Honda might lack the initial flash
of the Mazda, but it has lines that will still look classically good
when it’s five years old with hood chips and parking-lot door-dings.
Think of it as good bone structure – nothing fades faster than
cutting-edge style.
What’s more, a few points have to be deducted from the Mazda as only
the expensive GT trim wears the 19-inch big shoes to fill out the wheel
wells. 17-inch alloys are standard on the GX and GS trims – and they
look fine. However, the 18-inchers on the Honda come as the very first
upgrade over stock.
2014 Mazda6 (left) & 2013 Honda Accord (right). Click image to enlarge
Efficiency
Anyone who’s purchased a new vehicle in the past few years knows how
laughably optimistic Natural Resources Canada can be in reporting
average fuel consumption. Still, on paper the Mazda6 pips the Accord
handily at just 7.6/5.1 L/100 km city/highway versus the Accord’s
8.7/5.7 rating.
Those figures are an automatic-to-automatic comparison by the way,
but my Mazda6 tester was actually a six-speed manual that is rated a few
tenths of a litre worse than the excellent Mazda six-speed auto, yet
still ahead of the CVT-equipped Honda Accord. However, we can
extrapolate from the results.
In the real world, or at least Vancouver’s traffic, one of two things
happen. Either volume is heavy and sluggish and you inch along at low
rpms, or everyone drives like they’re fleeing the scene of a major
jewellery heist.
The end result of a week’s worth of mostly city driving is a dead
heat between the automatic Accord and the manual-box Mazda at around 10
L/100 km. Not trusting on-board computers, this figure is based on the
fuel burned by each vehicle over the week, calculated against mileage
travelled.
How useful is such a measurement? Not much: slight variability in
air-temperature over the week, an extra ten minutes of idling in traffic
or a slightly higher average speed, and a plus-or-minus figure of at
least 10 percent should be taken into account.
However, take into account the Mazda’s reduced efficiency due to the
manual tranny and the 6 should theoretically be 10 percent better than
the Accord over a year’s worth of driving.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Features/Value
Apples to apples, you might save a couple hundred dollars in fuel bills
by choosing to buy into Mazda’s Skyactiv technology. Over five years,
that’s a cool grand in your jeans – well worth considering, right?
Flipping open the Canadian Black Book shows a clean 2007 Mazda6 GT
sitting at wholesale values of around $8,600. The same exercise for a
roughly equivalent ’07 Accord EX shows $9,300. While fuel and
maintenance are certainly costs to be considered, vehicle depreciation
is the greatest cost a new-car owner will face and that big H-badge on
the front of the Accord still imparts confidence in the used-car market.
Taking a look at bang-for-buck, the Mazda6 commands a price premium
over an approximately equivalent Accord when looking at traditional
features like a power moonroof or leather interior. The leather-equipped
EX-L Accord undercuts the Luxury-package Mazda6 GX at $29,090 compared
to $30,395. The Honda’s rear seats are heated as well – more
luxury-level trickle-down for the rest of us!
Pare things down to the base models and the $23,990 Accord LX again
is slightly cheaper than the base $24,495 Mazda6 GX. Your chances of
finding a basic manual version of either car are pretty slim, but that
$500 spread remains when selecting the slightly more costly automatic
options.
Still, with both cars coming standard with 17-inch alloy wheels,
Bluetooth, heated front seats, and LCD displays, it’s hardly fair to
call either model basic. Worth noting is the Honda’s standard backup
camera and much-larger screen at 8 inches wide; however, the Mazda does
offer touchscreen capability on its smaller 5.8-inch display.
2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge
Safety
If you actually have the misfortune to ram either one of these
mid-sizers into an unyielding object, you’ll be happy to note that both
cars are IIHS top safety picks. The Accord does fare slightly better
than the ’6 in the small overlap front-impact test, but either one is a
safe, comfortable place to be sitting while driving into the
medium-sized tree of your choosing. Or what have you.
‘Course, if you do impact something it won’t be the car’s fault. As
mentioned, the Honda Accord has a back-up camera as standard (with
multiple angles in higher trim levels), and also can be equipped with a
clever passenger-side blind-spot camera that shows what your mirror
misses in a wide-angle shot on the centre-mounted display when turning
right. Warning chimes for both lane departure and frontal collision are
available on EX-L trim and upwards.
2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge |
As my Accord Sport tester wasn’t equipped with anything other than
the standard backup camera, it’d be unfair to comment as to the
effectiveness of Honda’s safety tech. Instead, I’ll editorialize a
little that the asymmetric nature of Honda’s camera is a bit odd (great
for avoiding cyclists, not really useful on a blind on-ramp). I’ll also
just express the vain hope that all these safety gizmos don’t turn us
all into even worse drivers, like the permanently distracted,
technology-dependent blobs from Pixar’s “Wall-E”.
However, if an electronic safety net is your thing, then, boy, has
Mazda got a car for you. You have to pay for it, as a back-up camera is
only available on the GS and up, but a whole host of warning systems are
available on the GT. GS and GT models have an audible blind-spot
monitoring system and rear cross-traffic alerts; an optional GT-only
technology package has gee-whiz goodies like radar-controlled cruise
control, automatic high-beam control – even an automated city-speed
braking system.
Mazda’s blind-spot system works extremely well – and if you’ve set your
mirrors properly, you really don’t need it. More useful is the rear
cross-traffic warning. Getting out of my driveway involves backing up a
small slope into a busy street – difficult with the swoopy rear styling
of the ’6 and compounded by my neighbour’s street-parked long-box pickup
truck. I was frankly impressed by the Mazda’s seeming ability to look
around the pickup and alert me of high-speed miscreants careening along, heedless of reverse lights.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Also worth noting is the Mazda6’s adaptive front lighting system.
Available only on GT models, this setup turns the projector headlamps
along with the front wheels, as though the car is “looking” through the
corner. It’s not new technology (you can get the same equipment on the
Mazda3), but it’s still an excellent feature and one that makes
night-time country roads much more liveable.
Left – 2014 Mazda6, right – 2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge
Space
Manufacturers will happily provide all manner of objective measurement
in the area of interior space. Thus, I am able to tell you that the
Honda Accord has 10 mm more rear headroom than the Mazda6. That’s not
even enough of a difference to change your hairstyle.
Hip room and shoulder room are slightly in Honda’s favour as well.
Overall, reading through the spec sheets, the Accord’s passenger volume
is larger by 98 L, which will please if you are a family of extra-large
amoebas.
Cargo space also skews in favour of the Accord, though I have to
speculate how much of the Honda’s advantage is down to the upper portion
of the trunk: both cars use a torsion set up rather than gas struts and
Mazda has shrouded theirs to prevent it crushing luggage. Points
deducted from Honda for the single-piece (rather than 60/40) folding
rear seatback.
Despite relatively minor differences, I can subjectively tell you
that the best way to differentiate the Mazda6′s interior from that of
the Accord is to describe the former as a cockpit. Where the Accord is
airy and spacious, the ’6 is closed-in, cloistered, a place for a driver
to focus on driving.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Driving Experience
Slotting the Mazda into first or plopping the Accord into “D” seems like
a formality. Surely the sleeker Mazda with its high-compression engine,
bolstered seats, and brand focus on driving pleasure will be the
runaway winner; after all, these are the guys behind the Miata. There
might be 18-inch alloys on that big white couch, but it’s still just a
decently reliable ride with the personality of mashed potatoes, right?
Not so fast. Mazda might still build the MX-5, but Honda is the
company that once built the CRX and the S2000, the Acura NSX and the
Integra Type-R. When it comes to an engaging four-cylinder engine and a
willing chassis, Honda used to be the go-to badge. They’ve just been, I
don’t know, taking a nap for the past few years.
Well guess what. Soichiro Honda just woke up.
Even though my Accord Sport is equipped with the enthusiast’s bane, a
CVT, it’s no ordinary Continually Terrible Transmission. Back to back
with the Mazda6, the Accord’s 2.4L direct-injection engine feels somehow
gruntier than the Mazda6’s torquier-on-paper 2.5L Skyactiv.
It’s got to be trickery from the belt-drive transmission as the two
cars are extremely close in power output: 189 hp at 6,400 rpm for the
Sport version of the Accord, 184 hp at 5,700 rpm for the Mazda6. Torque
is similarly close at 185 lb-ft at 3250 rpm for the Mazda and 182 lb-ft
at 3900 rpm for the Honda. If you can feel five horsepower’s worth of
difference, then you must be a stagecoach driver.
Despite the slightly greater torque, a great-shifting manual
transmission (kudos to Mazda for making the stick available right up to
the top-trim GT), and a curb weight that’s effectively one fully grown
passenger lighter than the Accord, the Mazda6 doesn’t run away with the
handling crown. Its steering is crisper, its engine more willing to rev –
and better sounding when it does.
However, punting the Accord Sport through my favourite hairpin
on-ramp, I can’t help feeling that the difference isn’t as pronounced as
you’d expect. The Accord is light on its feet, with a punchy midrange
and plenty of grip from 235-mm-wide tires (Sport and Touring models).
Pulling the same stunt with the ’6 shows the Mazda to be slightly
more feelsome in the bends. The six-speed transmission is no Miata
gearbox – let’s not get carried away – but it is crisp shifting and the
Skyactiv four-pot is a gloriously fizzy little thing. Much like most
Mazdas, past and present, the ’6 is at its happiest when you’re
thrashing it up through the rev-range; this as a contrast with the
Accord, which still feels pretty zoomy, albeit happier at the 80
percent.
Left – 2013 Honda Accord in black, right – 2014 Mazda6 in white, just to keep you on your toes.
Conclusion
Neck and neck through the finish line, and we’re doubly impressed.
Firstly, Mazda has built a car that’s strongly appealing and dynamic to
drive – a machine that thrills, yet still manages to deal with
day-to-day schlepping with hardly any drawbacks.
However, the laurels can’t go to both, and it’s the Accord that
narrowly feels like the better total package. It’s a hair better in the
value department, a tad more spacious; it’s broadly appealing and, best
of all, marks something of a return-to-form for Honda driving pleasure.
What’s more, there’s the sense that this car’s going to be a great
hand-me-down for the kids one day; the automotive equivalent of a
faithful Labrador retriever. Like the somewhat-staid styling, the
engineering under the skin is conservative enough to stand the test of
time.
As a conquest vehicle, the Mazda6 is the real deal, a must-drive on
any shopper’s list, and the available manual-transmission in everything
except the Tech-package GT would be a major factor in successfully
courting my purchasing dollar.
However, the thing about Vanilla is that, done right, it’s pretty darn tasty. And it goes with
everything.
Source;
http://www.autos.ca/car-comparisons/comparison-test-2014-mazda6-vs-2013-honda-accord-sedan/?all=1
