>> Mazda6, used to kind of be the poor cousin among its competitors from Toyota, Honda and Nissan -- not anymore. Here's the brand new 6, got a lot more gravitas, that's for sure. Let's see if it's got a lot more tech. Let's go.
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>> Now our Mazda6 is a Mazda6 i series Grand Touring, which is nicely loaded. This head unit is upgraded. Navigation is not standard. As you can see it's a 7-inch screen, good size display. It's a touch screen as well. Unfortunately, it's ugly as seem, just grindy and crunchy and Fisher Price -- not a winner, but functionally it's a pretty good system. Entering destinations in such is very easy. There's pretty quick response here, it doesn't make you wait a long time. You do have voice command on this guy. You got a button there and you got a button here, unfortunately it's not real intuitive, so I've got to pull out my little book here of commands that it really wants to hear. I don't like that. Map.
>> Kind position.
>> Zoom in.
>> Zooming in.
>> Gas station.
>> System is showing the gas station icons.
>> Casino.
>> System is showing the casino icons.
>> Alright, so once you deal with the commands in the book the response is good. I had no problem of getting it to understand what I'm saying as long it's on the list. Now if you don't get this car loaded up, you're gonna be in the dirt in terms of entertainment system. It will be a single slot CD, 6 speakers, AM/FM. Oh yeah, an aux jack -- boring, but we have the cool system. The Bose center point audio, surround sound rig, 10 speakers including a powered sub and some nice choices on source as we can see right here. AM/FM, no HD radio, 6-disc in-dash changer and when my disc is in, I'm not getting any read out. There's no grace note database or anything here, that's kind of disappointing. This is not a hard drive based system. That's the part of the reason we don't have a look up table there, but moving on in the sources I was delighted by this, Bluetooth audio. That is kind of cool. I paired my BlackBerry to it and while I'm not getting any read out of what I'm playing. I'm definitely playing off my BlackBerry. Sounds good that's the new Bluetooth streaming that cars are starting to adopt now. I'm concerned though because we don't have an iPod option on this car -- not that I could find in the build sheet. Might be a dealer installed thing. Now, you know right away that they have read down the Mazda6 the minute you sit on the car from this trippy kind of fake wood, black ebony thing with this pattern in it, to much nicer materials all around and generally more of a dare I say it Acura look. Underway the first surprise crops up in my peripheral vision. This GT trim level Mazda6 has blind spot monitoring standard. It flashes a warning in the mirror when there's a car in your blind spot and it beeps if you flick your turn signal in that direction. Bluetooth hands-free, rain sensing wipers and dual-zone climate control, also standard at this trim level. These i series cars have a 2.5-liter 4 doing a 175-horsepower and 167 foot pounds. Good balanced numbers. It's a happy and pretty chunky 4, but you never forget it's a 4. And the phrase gutless never came to mind though the phrase trying hard did on occasion. The standard trainy is a 6 speed manual and I'd say it's among the better ones we've driven. Very crisp, nice smooth effort between the gears and those gears were easy to find. You can also option a 5-speed automatic with shift ability. Okay, let's price our '09 Mazda6 i series Grand Touring. It's about 27,500 with delivery and that includes nice touches like that blind spot monitoring system, but not all the tech toys I showed you. You got a pony up 2000 for the navigation system. Another 1750 gets you an odd package that combines Bose audio with the moonroof, another 900 for the automatic, that by the way would be a 5-speed.
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