No Reserve One Owner Automatic Fwd Rims Xenon Sport Sunroof 3rd Row Seat New Oil on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2014 Mazda6 i Sport

In an automotive landscape dominated by platform sharing, technology exchange and any number of other cross-fertilization/cost-saving/amortization exercises, it's actually pretty rare that we get to drive a new car that is as "all-new" as this, the 2014 Mazda6. With brand-spanking new Skyactiv architecture throughout - engine, transmission, body and chassis all included - this 6 represents a new era of flexible production and cutting edge running gear for the happily lithe car company.
Our own Jonathon Ramsey did a cracking job of running the Mazda6 through its First Drive paces a few months ago, and sufficiently impressed upon us just how good looking a car this is for the midsize sedan segment. Suffice it to say, now, then, that this is easily the most interesting (and quite possibly the most beautiful) midsize sedan in the segment today. However, as Mr. Ramsey reviewed a fully contented example of the 6 - one equipped with the six-speed automatic transmission - we took advantage of Mazda's North American launch event of the car to suss out the base Mazda6 i Sport, complete with its six-speed Skyactiv manual gearbox. This may not shock you, but the stripper's pretty good, too.
Driving Notes

NHTSA releases updated Takata airbag recalled cars list, but it still has errors

Unfortunately, the government's list still contains errors.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued an updated list of vehicle models that it's urging owners to repair under the mushrooming Takata airbag inflator recall. The latest version adds vehicles from new automakers like Subaru and Ford that are missing from the original announcement, and it also removes erroneous entries from General Motors, leaving only the 2005 Saab 9-2X (a reskinned Subaru WRX), and the 2003-2005 Pontiac Vibe, a joint project with Toyota.

Mazda goes on engineer hiring binge as recovery picks up speed

Japan's larger automakers - companies like Toyota, Honda and Nissan - have tremendous engineering talent at their disposal. That's largely because, selling as many cars as they do, they've got more revenues to tap into. Logic might dictate, then, that smaller automakers like Mazda, which no longer has the deep pockets afforded to it by its former partnership with Ford, might have less of a budget and workforce for engineering. But Mazda has been raking in record profits, and it plans on cashing those revenues in by hiring a substantial new pool of engineers.
According to Automotive News, Mazda is preparing to hire as many as 185 new engineers over the next two years - almost four times as many as the 50 engineers it previously targeted. Many of those engineers will be put to work developing the second-generation, Skyactiv 2 technologies that are on the drawing board while the first round of Skyactiv features are still being rolled out.
The boost in recruitment is enabled by a positive fiscal year that ended last March, marking the first profits Mazda had logged in four years. Sources anticipate that the fiscal year culminating at the end of this month will mark the company's most profitable yet, netting over a billion dollars to eclipse the fiscal year that ended in 2008 when it recorded $872.5 million in profits.