Review by Brendan McAleer, photos by Brendan McAleer and Autos.ca staff
All things considered, it really would be best if the Mazda6 pictured above was brown.
Sure, the swelling lines of the ’6 would look rich and luscious in a deep metallic colour, in the spirit of the brownnaissance that’s sweeping through the auto industry (Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are suddenly fond of using the hue in press shots) – but that’s not what’s behind my reasoning. No, brown would be appropriate because what we’ve got here is the oldest taste-test in the book: Vanilla versus Chocolate.
Luckily, the Accord happens to be the right colour, same as my washer and dryer; possibly the same as your iPod. So, an apparent contest between an appliance and a four-door Miata – should be an easy victory for the Mazda, right? Not quite.
Style/Design
While the compact car market remains Canada’s largest volume segment in terms of vehicle sales, buying a mid-sized family car isn’t quite the emotionless choice that selecting an A-to-B commuter can be. Sure, you need some everyday four-door essentials, but this is a big purchase and come Sunday morning, you’ll probably be proudly washing it in the driveway with the kids.
The folks who buy, lease or finance a mid-sized family sedan are likely to bring it home, park it out front and surreptitiously check to see whether the neighbours are peeping through the curtains enviously. You want something practical, but also something you can be proud of.
Almost immediately, you have to hand it to Mazda’s styling team for sculpting probably the best-looking mid-sized car on the market bar the Ford Fusion. Some of the long-hood-short-deck profile is due to packaging considerations for the Mazda’s high-compression engine (more on that later), but you’d be hard-pressed to find an angle from which the Mazda6 doesn’t look the proverbial million bucks.
Riding around the tony neighbourhood of West Vancouver, where 911s are more common than Vee-Dubs and Audi/BMW ownership is practically a compulsory city bylaw, my GT-trim tester still manages to turn a few heads. It looks more expensive than it is.
In comparison, the Accord aims not to offend anyone’s palate too much and mostly succeeds. Sport trim adds 18-inch alloy wheels, a subtle rear spoiler and chrome exhaust tips by way of decorating a conservative, squared-off shape.
And yet, somehow it all works. The Honda might lack the initial flash of the Mazda, but it has lines that will still look classically good when it’s five years old with hood chips and parking-lot door-dings. Think of it as good bone structure – nothing fades faster than cutting-edge style.
What’s more, a few points have to be deducted from the Mazda as only the expensive GT trim wears the 19-inch big shoes to fill out the wheel wells. 17-inch alloys are standard on the GX and GS trims – and they look fine. However, the 18-inchers on the Honda come as the very first upgrade over stock.
2014 Mazda6 (left) & 2013 Honda Accord (right). Click image to enlarge
Efficiency
Anyone who’s purchased a new vehicle in the past few years knows how laughably optimistic Natural Resources Canada can be in reporting average fuel consumption. Still, on paper the Mazda6 pips the Accord handily at just 7.6/5.1 L/100 km city/highway versus the Accord’s 8.7/5.7 rating.
Those figures are an automatic-to-automatic comparison by the way, but my Mazda6 tester was actually a six-speed manual that is rated a few tenths of a litre worse than the excellent Mazda six-speed auto, yet still ahead of the CVT-equipped Honda Accord. However, we can extrapolate from the results.
In the real world, or at least Vancouver’s traffic, one of two things happen. Either volume is heavy and sluggish and you inch along at low rpms, or everyone drives like they’re fleeing the scene of a major jewellery heist.
The end result of a week’s worth of mostly city driving is a dead heat between the automatic Accord and the manual-box Mazda at around 10 L/100 km. Not trusting on-board computers, this figure is based on the fuel burned by each vehicle over the week, calculated against mileage travelled.
How useful is such a measurement? Not much: slight variability in air-temperature over the week, an extra ten minutes of idling in traffic or a slightly higher average speed, and a plus-or-minus figure of at least 10 percent should be taken into account.
However, take into account the Mazda’s reduced efficiency due to the manual tranny and the 6 should theoretically be 10 percent better than the Accord over a year’s worth of driving.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Features/Value
Apples to apples, you might save a couple hundred dollars in fuel bills by choosing to buy into Mazda’s Skyactiv technology. Over five years, that’s a cool grand in your jeans – well worth considering, right?
Flipping open the Canadian Black Book shows a clean 2007 Mazda6 GT sitting at wholesale values of around $8,600. The same exercise for a roughly equivalent ’07 Accord EX shows $9,300. While fuel and maintenance are certainly costs to be considered, vehicle depreciation is the greatest cost a new-car owner will face and that big H-badge on the front of the Accord still imparts confidence in the used-car market.
Taking a look at bang-for-buck, the Mazda6 commands a price premium over an approximately equivalent Accord when looking at traditional features like a power moonroof or leather interior. The leather-equipped EX-L Accord undercuts the Luxury-package Mazda6 GX at $29,090 compared to $30,395. The Honda’s rear seats are heated as well – more luxury-level trickle-down for the rest of us!
Pare things down to the base models and the $23,990 Accord LX again is slightly cheaper than the base $24,495 Mazda6 GX. Your chances of finding a basic manual version of either car are pretty slim, but that $500 spread remains when selecting the slightly more costly automatic options.
Still, with both cars coming standard with 17-inch alloy wheels, Bluetooth, heated front seats, and LCD displays, it’s hardly fair to call either model basic. Worth noting is the Honda’s standard backup camera and much-larger screen at 8 inches wide; however, the Mazda does offer touchscreen capability on its smaller 5.8-inch display.
2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge
Safety
If you actually have the misfortune to ram either one of these mid-sizers into an unyielding object, you’ll be happy to note that both cars are IIHS top safety picks. The Accord does fare slightly better than the ’6 in the small overlap front-impact test, but either one is a safe, comfortable place to be sitting while driving into the medium-sized tree of your choosing. Or what have you.
‘Course, if you do impact something it won’t be the car’s fault. As mentioned, the Honda Accord has a back-up camera as standard (with multiple angles in higher trim levels), and also can be equipped with a clever passenger-side blind-spot camera that shows what your mirror misses in a wide-angle shot on the centre-mounted display when turning right. Warning chimes for both lane departure and frontal collision are available on EX-L trim and upwards.
  2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge |
However, if an electronic safety net is your thing, then, boy, has Mazda got a car for you. You have to pay for it, as a back-up camera is only available on the GS and up, but a whole host of warning systems are available on the GT. GS and GT models have an audible blind-spot monitoring system and rear cross-traffic alerts; an optional GT-only technology package has gee-whiz goodies like radar-controlled cruise control, automatic high-beam control – even an automated city-speed braking system.
Mazda’s blind-spot system works extremely well – and if you’ve set your mirrors properly, you really don’t need it. More useful is the rear cross-traffic warning. Getting out of my driveway involves backing up a small slope into a busy street – difficult with the swoopy rear styling of the ’6 and compounded by my neighbour’s street-parked long-box pickup truck. I was frankly impressed by the Mazda’s seeming ability to look around the pickup and alert me of high-speed miscreants careening along, heedless of reverse lights.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Also worth noting is the Mazda6’s adaptive front lighting system. Available only on GT models, this setup turns the projector headlamps along with the front wheels, as though the car is “looking” through the corner. It’s not new technology (you can get the same equipment on the Mazda3), but it’s still an excellent feature and one that makes night-time country roads much more liveable.
Left – 2014 Mazda6, right – 2013 Honda Accord. Click image to enlarge
Space
Manufacturers will happily provide all manner of objective measurement in the area of interior space. Thus, I am able to tell you that the Honda Accord has 10 mm more rear headroom than the Mazda6. That’s not even enough of a difference to change your hairstyle.
Hip room and shoulder room are slightly in Honda’s favour as well. Overall, reading through the spec sheets, the Accord’s passenger volume is larger by 98 L, which will please if you are a family of extra-large amoebas.
Cargo space also skews in favour of the Accord, though I have to speculate how much of the Honda’s advantage is down to the upper portion of the trunk: both cars use a torsion set up rather than gas struts and Mazda has shrouded theirs to prevent it crushing luggage. Points deducted from Honda for the single-piece (rather than 60/40) folding rear seatback.
Despite relatively minor differences, I can subjectively tell you that the best way to differentiate the Mazda6′s interior from that of the Accord is to describe the former as a cockpit. Where the Accord is airy and spacious, the ’6 is closed-in, cloistered, a place for a driver to focus on driving.
2014 Mazda6. Click image to enlarge
Driving Experience
Slotting the Mazda into first or plopping the Accord into “D” seems like a formality. Surely the sleeker Mazda with its high-compression engine, bolstered seats, and brand focus on driving pleasure will be the runaway winner; after all, these are the guys behind the Miata. There might be 18-inch alloys on that big white couch, but it’s still just a decently reliable ride with the personality of mashed potatoes, right?
Not so fast. Mazda might still build the MX-5, but Honda is the company that once built the CRX and the S2000, the Acura NSX and the Integra Type-R. When it comes to an engaging four-cylinder engine and a willing chassis, Honda used to be the go-to badge. They’ve just been, I don’t know, taking a nap for the past few years.
Well guess what. Soichiro Honda just woke up.
Even though my Accord Sport is equipped with the enthusiast’s bane, a CVT, it’s no ordinary Continually Terrible Transmission. Back to back with the Mazda6, the Accord’s 2.4L direct-injection engine feels somehow gruntier than the Mazda6’s torquier-on-paper 2.5L Skyactiv.
It’s got to be trickery from the belt-drive transmission as the two cars are extremely close in power output: 189 hp at 6,400 rpm for the Sport version of the Accord, 184 hp at 5,700 rpm for the Mazda6. Torque is similarly close at 185 lb-ft at 3250 rpm for the Mazda and 182 lb-ft at 3900 rpm for the Honda. If you can feel five horsepower’s worth of difference, then you must be a stagecoach driver.
Despite the slightly greater torque, a great-shifting manual transmission (kudos to Mazda for making the stick available right up to the top-trim GT), and a curb weight that’s effectively one fully grown passenger lighter than the Accord, the Mazda6 doesn’t run away with the handling crown. Its steering is crisper, its engine more willing to rev – and better sounding when it does.
However, punting the Accord Sport through my favourite hairpin on-ramp, I can’t help feeling that the difference isn’t as pronounced as you’d expect. The Accord is light on its feet, with a punchy midrange and plenty of grip from 235-mm-wide tires (Sport and Touring models).
Pulling the same stunt with the ’6 shows the Mazda to be slightly more feelsome in the bends. The six-speed transmission is no Miata gearbox – let’s not get carried away – but it is crisp shifting and the Skyactiv four-pot is a gloriously fizzy little thing. Much like most Mazdas, past and present, the ’6 is at its happiest when you’re thrashing it up through the rev-range; this as a contrast with the Accord, which still feels pretty zoomy, albeit happier at the 80 percent.
Left – 2013 Honda Accord in black, right – 2014 Mazda6 in white, just to keep you on your toes.
Conclusion
Neck and neck through the finish line, and we’re doubly impressed. Firstly, Mazda has built a car that’s strongly appealing and dynamic to drive – a machine that thrills, yet still manages to deal with day-to-day schlepping with hardly any drawbacks.
However, the laurels can’t go to both, and it’s the Accord that narrowly feels like the better total package. It’s a hair better in the value department, a tad more spacious; it’s broadly appealing and, best of all, marks something of a return-to-form for Honda driving pleasure.
What’s more, there’s the sense that this car’s going to be a great hand-me-down for the kids one day; the automotive equivalent of a faithful Labrador retriever. Like the somewhat-staid styling, the engineering under the skin is conservative enough to stand the test of time.
As a conquest vehicle, the Mazda6 is the real deal, a must-drive on any shopper’s list, and the available manual-transmission in everything except the Tech-package GT would be a major factor in successfully courting my purchasing dollar.
However, the thing about Vanilla is that, done right, it’s pretty darn tasty. And it goes with everything.
Source;
http://www.autos.ca/car-comparisons/comparison-test-2014-mazda6-vs-2013-honda-accord-sedan/?all=1
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