Mazda
Driven: 2010 Mazda3
When you think about driving along the mountain roads of southern California, your brain immediately fixates on images of Lotus Elises and Porsche Boxsters as potential quick-footed dance partners for a day of driving fun. But in reality, any car with nimble steering, a taught suspension, and a bit of pep in its step can give similar pleasures. Take our 2010 Mazda3, for example. We spent many hours throwing it through a seemingly endless series of back-and-forth, left-and-right turns, and walked away feeling quite satisfied. The previous generation 3 was seriously fun in these conditions. We’re happy to report that the new car is too.
Driven: 2009 Mazda RX-8 GT
The Mazda RX-8 continues to have us puzzled as to why more of these aren’t on the road. No, the rotary engine isn’t four-season friendly, and neither is the car’s rear-wheel-drive, but when the weather is right, the RX-8 really shines. For 2009, a re-worked exterior sports a slightly more aggressive fascia, and while our Grand Touring model doesn’t have all of the beefy visual add-ons found on the R3 (a new model for ’09), we still had a lot of fun throwing this Mazda into bends and revving the twin-rotor engine way up past 8000 rpm.
Driven: We Drive the 2009 Mazda6
Hard as it may be to fathom, we automotive journalists get things wrong every once in a while. Despite perpetually cheering for the 2003-2008 Mazda6’s ragtag charms and dynamic excellence in a crowd of somnambulant sedans, it never really sold. Nevermind that it was a wieldy package and fun to grab by the scruff on winding roads, it languished on showroom floors while far duller drives poured out of showrooms like so many bags of rice. Heck, we even heartily applauded the availability of a segment-best three separate body styles (sedan, wagon, and touring), as well as a genuine high-performance variant, the Mazdaspeed6. Still no dice. Great handling and a multiplicity of formats are evidently no substitute for outright size and power in the family sedan stakes. Not that we’re bitter or anything.
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