Just giving an update on my 6s manual now at 7000 miles after 3 months of ownership.

The best part of this review is the simplicity of this car — it just melds into pure driving excitement day in and day out. I don’t even have to think about it. It just performs effortlessly and reliably. I haven’t had a single problem with the car.

I’ve driven it on both long trips (900 miles) and my daily commute (35 miles in each direction). I’ve had many passengers in the back seat and nobody’s complained at all about ride comfort or roominess. It seems everyone is happy when riding in the car and all I get are compliments on it.

I will agree with Car and Driver that Mazda should rethink the heat seaters, which seem to be keyed to the automatic climate control system (providing heat intermittantly, depending upon seat temperature, climate control settings, and ambient temp). Could definitely rethink those button placements too, but they don’t bother me.

My biggest peeve with the car is the lack of low-end torque below 3000 RPM. It’s not horrible, but because the power curve isn’t completely linear, it takes some getting used to. I’d prefer if the torque started lower and was more smoothly distributed. I assume this is a function of engine refinement and will only improve in future models.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2004 at 11:33 am and is filed under General, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.