Be aware, if you’re shopping for the 6 in manual transmission guise, this car sports a “hard clutch.” This means, basically, that it’s more of a challenge to shift it smoothly unless you revving the engine pretty high up (which is fun to do alone, but makes you look like a bit of a maniac when friends and family are in the car with you!).

The symptoms of “clutch shudder” in the Mazda 6 is a little bit of a shudder you’ll feel, especially shifting from first to second gear. This appears more often first thing in the morning when the car is cold and hasn’t been used. It also seems to be more prevalent in V6 clothing, than the 4-cylinder.

After a year of ownership, I can still cause the Mazda6 to “shudder” when changing gears, although never intentionally. This appears to be another small quirk of the car and its current choice of shifter gear and transmission. (Some experts will claim it’s just a matter of being able to “match” revs with the shift point, but frankly, I’ve never had so much of a challenge doing this than I have in this car.)

Don’t get me wrong — this happens once in awhile and doesn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the Mazda 6, especially its smooth highway cruising (it always feels like you’re travelling slower than the speedometer reads!). Just something to be aware of…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 7:17 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.