With a drag coefficient of 0.27, the redesigned Mazda 6 is the best the Japanese firm has ever done in Europe. It’s also claimed to be the best in the D-segment sedan class.
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Unveiled at the Frankfurt show, the car will go on sale next spring with a range of engines including petrol 1.8 and 2.0-litre units, plus a two-litre diesel. Pricing here in the UK will start at around GBP15,500 with the same three body styles – saloon, hatchback and estate – as in the outgoing model. The company expects to sell around 15,000 units a year.
Ryuichi Umeshita is programme manager for the car, and said every aspect of the car had been enhanced over its predecessor. But there were two areas he picked out – and not surprisingly the first was aerodynamics.
“An example of how we have worked on this car is a small horseshoe-shaped air deflector ahead of the front wheel. This has helped to create a more slippery shape but without affecting the cooling flow to the front brakes. The second area is NVH [noise, vibration and harshness]. We wanted the driver to enjoy the sportiness of the car in a comfortable environment. We believe the new car will have best-in-class road noise levels.”
Another innovation is what Mazda is calling the CF-Net, or cross functional network. It’s a combination of switches on the left steering wheel spoke which controls many of the car’s comfort functions. A centralised display at the top of the instrument panel provides the information.
Umeshita explained: “We wanted the driver to focus on driving and operating the functions safely. The system works by the driver pushing the button a number of times to shift the cursor along a row of options. So for example, one push might access navigation, two might access climate control, three might access the audio systems. This is intuitive and over time the driver will get used to what to do without even looking at the screen. The CF-Net is something that you will see on other products in the future.”
