Zoom, Zooming with the New Mazda 6

The new Mazda 6 is not a new car, at least not in terms of launch date. Be that as it may, it's still one of the best looking non-Continental executive saloons in the Malaysian market.

With its Kinetic design approach, the Mazda 6 quickly outshone the Toyota Camry's straight-line, less curvaceous design. Of course, Toyota Camry lovers disagree, but as we can see, the Kinetic design is so compelling that Hyundai has adopted it as a strategy to capture market share from Toyota using its newly designed Sonata.

Hyundai does nothing special to hide its copycat strategy, simply calling its design approach "It flows" (which is another way of describing 'kinetic'). And as a result, many a reviewer have hailed the new Sonata as being better looking than the Camry - and some have hailed it as being better than the Mazda 6 (e.g. Cars, Bikes & Trucks).

Anyway, having owned a Mazda 6 for several months now, I dare say, the car not only looks great, it feels great too. It has a commanding presence on the road, but not too much that every other racer boy or wannabe racer feels compelled to race with it.

That is to say, while it looks sporty, its not a sports car; not like how the previous Mazda 6 was set up to be.

You see, the previous Mazda 6 appeared to have been designed as a sports car first and then tuned down to be a family saloon. As a result, the suspension and handling still had a lot of hard characteristics that you'd find in a sports car - which was why some have described the old Mazda 6 as a sports car trying very hard to be a family saloon.

The new Mazda 6 is more of a luxury saloon, but not of the sort you'd expect to cater to old people. Staying true to Mazda's "Zoom zoom" approach to designing cars, the Mazda 6 feels less like a sports car but still responds well when you need to put peddle-to-the-metal.

The Mazda 6 in Malaysia comes in two variants - 2.5L with 18-inch rims and 2.0L with 16-inch rims, at RM175,000+ and RM150,000+ respectively. The prices are a bit steep for most people, but if you can afford them, I say both variants are worth the price you pay.

This is especially so because you get quality comparable to German marquees like VW, Mercedes, BMW and Audi, but without paying as much. And that is simply great if you share in my belief that you should always get the best value from the money you spend on cars.

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Addendum: Notice that I didn't mention the new Honda Accord. Well, that's because I don't think it's a very good car. Its expensive and tries hard to be in the Camry-Sonata-Mazda 6 league, but doesn't quite make the cut.

The new Honda Accord's seemingly random design approach makes the car hideous (especially the bulbous headlights) and anything but sleek. It's 2.4L engine is under-powered, such that a car far less expensive and less powerful like the Kia Forte 2.0SX can out-accelerate it, which doesn't bode well for the 2.0L version of the Accord.

Perhaps the only major thing the Accord has that's worth considering is the Honda badge.

The quicker the next variant of the Honda Accord comes out, the better.