January 2006

Some people see visions of the virgin mary. Some other people see visions of other things.

Are you a believer?

Last thursday I traded in the Miata I bought last year and purchased a new car. After driving the Miata back from the west coast and spending a full year with it I finally decided that it wasn’t the right car for how I was using it. Turns out I never put the top down and spent a lot of time lamenting that I couldn’t take more than one friend at a time in it. And that one friend in the passenger seat would often be pretty uncomfortable.

The Miata was designed for one person: the driver. And in that purpose it was perfect. I suspect I will never own a car that was quite as nice to drive as the Miata. Light, perfectly balanced with fun power and a great road feel I have yet to find a car that made the driver-car connection as well as that one. Hats off to Mazda for making such a wonderful little car, and for continuing to keep to the tradition. In 2006 they are still making them with the same focus.

Enter stage left.

I replaced it with a 2006 Mazdaspeed6. When I was looking for cars I had a few parameters. I knew I was looking for an all wheel drive 4-door sporty sedan that had a nice interior. It also had to go when you stepped on the pedal on the right. It turns out that if you use that as your box there are only a few cars that make the cut. Those include the Audi A4, the Subaru Legacy GT and the car above.

The Audi was a few thousand dollars more than the Mazda, and I don’t think that you get as much for that premium – except of course for the Audi name. True, they are great cars and I have long lusted after the Audis that my friends have purchased, but I just decided it wasn’t worth the markup. So it came down to the Subaru and the Mazda. I drove the Subaru and I liked it, but in the end I went with the Mazda because I was more impressed with the driving experience and interior of the Mazda.

I tell people this car is a rocket ship. It ships with a 2.3 Liter turbocharged direct injection engine that racks up approximately 270hp. As a result, it’s been reported that the car can do 0-60 in around 6 seconds (6.5 officially, I’ve seen reports in the 5.5 range.) I haven’t had the chance to really open it up yet – it’s still in its break-in period – but I have been been mighty impressed with the little that I have seen. It’s very easy to find yourself doing 85mph without even thinking about it. This is a car that likes to pass.

The rest of the drive train is made up of a very smooth 6-speed manual transmission coupled to an all wheel drive system that includes a torque distribution system. This system can vary the distribution of power, front to back from 100/0 to 50/50, depending on the road status. It also has a limited slip rear differential which will help considerably in many conditions. I drove it in pretty heavy snow the day after I brought it home and I really liked the performance of the AWD system, even climbing up some pretty large hills.

Braking was another matter. The car slid often, even under pretty light braking conditions and it was very easy to get the rear of the car sliding sideways. However, I blame this largely on the tires of the car. They are still summer sport tires. I’ll have to get a set of good snow tires on the car and see how it performs.

I sprung for the “Grand Touring” version of the car, which means it came equipped with a bunch of nice interior features. Leather, heated seats, keyless entry, a nice moon roof and nice Bose sound system round out the inside of the car. It’s very comfortable to drive and doesn’t have a huge amount of road or engine noise. Or I should say just enough of both for it to still feel like a sports car.

The only thing that worries me about the car is that the engine, transmission, and AWD system – many of the systems in the car – are apparently new and will possibly be only be used in this model. This means that down the road when it comes time to fix problems in the car, how hard is it going to be to find parts? And how reliable will the systems be in the meantime? Only time will tell, I guess. Hopefully Mazda will be able to back up the car with the service it deserves.