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For the past quarter-century a friend has used what are fairly commonplace rules of thumb for buying a new car, her preference being midsize four-door sedans. It must get decent-to-good gas mileage; score high on ratings on safety, maintenance and reliability; and offer relatively smooth handling, ample trunk space and enough legroom in the backseat for at least two...




For the past quarter-century a friend has used what are fairly commonplace rules of thumb for buying a new car, her preference being midsize four-door sedans. It must get decent-to-good gas mileage; score high on ratings on safety, maintenance and reliability; and offer relatively smooth handling, ample trunk space and enough legroom in the backseat for at least two full-sized adults. Cloth as opposed to leather seats are perfectly fine. Power windows and locks? OK. Not to worry though if the steering wheel doesn’t boast enough on-board control buttons to operate a nuclear submarine.



View full sizePhoto by James Gaffney/The Times-Picayune

Of scant concern to her is power. All of her cars have had four-cylinder engines with automatic transmissions that get the job done but with little-to-no oomph under the hood. She would rather pocket the money she saves from the better gas mileage she gets with a four-cylinder engine than fret over freeway onramp acceleration, especially since she keeps her cars on average five to eight years.



My friend has been happy with her choice of largely Japanese cars over the past 25 years (haven’t we all, truth be told?) and wouldn’t have traded any of them for all the tea in, well, Detroit.



“I can drive my eight-year-old car with 120,000 miles on it across country with total confidence knowing that it won’t break down and strand me in some tumbleweed town where the hills have eyes,” she said.

View full sizePhoto by James Gaffney/The Times-Picayune

For my friend and countless others like her, there’s a new kid in town that meets all of the aforementioned criteria: the 2011 Mazda 6 Touring Plus. Completely redesigned in 2009 and tweaked for 2011 with the addition of new foglamps and headlights (plus enough legroom in back for two adults), the Mazda 6, it turns out, is the car critics like to praise and consumers like to own.



Maybe for good reason.



In addition to a five-star crash safety rating coupled with air bags and air curtains and dynamic stability control, the Mazda 6 Touring Plus comes equipped with a blind-spot monitoring system that alerts drivers (with an on-board tone and flashing icons on both side view mirrors) when they are attempting to move into a lane in which a vehicle is present. This is the kind of safety feature one normally associates with executive-level luxury vehicles like Audi, Jaguar and Volvo. The fact that it’s standard in the mid-level model of the Mazda 6, whose starting MSRP is $22,635 (the test-drive vehicle I drove cost $24,240), is clear indication the automaker intends to rattle the cages of its competitors over at Honda and Nissan.



FYI, the Mazda 6 comes in four trim levels: Sport, Touring, Touring Plus and Grand Touring. The base price for the entry-level Mazda 6 Sport is $19,400.



Downshift maniac?

Arguably the most rave-worthy aspect of the Mazda 6 include its surprisingly sporty handling and “driveability,” mated to the smooth-as-butter, optional five-speed automatic transmission (with manual shift mode) that comes with this front-wheel-drive vehicle’s standard 2.5-liter, DOHC (dual-overhead cam), 16-valve inline four-cylinder engine.

View full sizePhoto by James Gaffney/The Times-Picayune

If like my friend you don’t give a tinker’s cuss about power and performance, the 170 horsepower and 167 pound-feet of torque is certainly sufficient to get you from Point A to Point B without anyone being the wiser. Truth is not everyone desires to downshift like a maniac through a gauntlet of highway traffic cones when no one is looking. I

Tags: Mazda, is-featured

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PURE AND SIMPLE: How the Mazda 6 keeps it real was originally published by New Orleans Auto Reviews: Mazda. Read the full story by clicking here.