Video: 2014 Mazda6

It drops last year's available V6 engine for a higher tech four-cylinder and a diesel engine. Let's check it out. Styling follows Mazda's KODO styling theme, shown in the Takeri Concept at last spring's New York Auto Show. You can see here, the car is kind of crouching forward, the stance is kind of leaning. It's got angrier-looking headlights. Mazda says it moved the front wheels four inches forward, to give the car less front overhang, definitely a sportier appearance. The side mirrors now sit on the doors, rather than the car itself, the body of the car. And that hopefully improves aerodynamics, Mazda says, though we don't have fuel economy numbers yet. A new direct-injection, 2.5 liter four-cylinder is gonna be standard. When the Mazda6 first shows up, expect a 2.2 liter diesel four-cylinder to make its way into the car, beginning in the second half of 2013. We don't have fuel economy numbers yet for either engine, but because of diesel's higher energy density, expect gas mileage to be pretty darn good for that latter offering. Mazda doesn't blaze much new territory in terms of styling with the interior. But, materials in these auto show cars are pretty good. Things like a nice, smoked silver, instead of the lighter kind of plasticy silver you see across the center. Things like fabric down the A pillars. Not typical things that you find in a midsize family car. A couple misses. The armrests are kinda narrow. My elbows keep wanting to fall off, the way they're sculpted here toward the rear corners. You're gonna have to get a little creative in terms of finding places to stash your stuff. The center console's pretty small. And the door pockets aren't really pockets, there's just sort of bottle holders there. The backseat is okay. A good packaging between seating position. It's high enough off the ground and head room. Usually, you sacrifice one for the other. And I'm about six-feet tall, that's where I would sit to drive. So, I've got decent leg room here in the back seat left over. One thing we don't like so much is the floor hump. It's pretty substantial for this car, it robs a lot of footwell space. Mazda didn't provide us with specs for trunk volume yet, but the area looks pretty deep, pretty wide. A little bit shallow though. One kinda cool thing, arm hinges often will come down and crunch your luggage in a lot of Mazda6 competitors. These kinda fall into channels here, they stay nice and out of the way. (trunk slams shut) The Mazda6 is sort of a bit player among family cars. The Toyota Camry outsells it by more than 10 to 1 right now. Does the re-design have what it takes to take a bigger chunk out of that market? We'll have to wait until it shows up in January of 2013, to find out. <v Narrator>For more car-related news, go to www.Cars.com. Or our blog www.KickingTires.net.