For the past week we have had a beautiful Mazda 6 Grand Touring sedan to drive around. It was red and was a perfect Christmas sleigh for us to do all of our holiday events. We were loaned the car to use for the week so that we could use it in the real work and tell you about our experiences. These are our opinions.

After driving the Mazda 6 for a week and doing all of our last minute Christmas errands we had a day where we could take a road trip and really get a good feel for the car. So, we decided that we would drive down to the Cape to visit my grandparents. We hadn’t seen them during the holiday and so we called them up and planned to come down, pick up lunch and have a visit. Before we went to their place we stopped at my parent’s house and picked up a few things for another upcoming trip. It was there that I decided to take the above photo. Hopefully, it doesn’t show much of the road salt from driving in New England after it snows. This is always a problem for me when I check out a car because they always get a day into the loan and the snow, sand and salt comes. It is hard to take good photos when the region’s weather is out to thwart you.

Lucky for me I know this so I try and take a few photos right away of the outside of the cars. The Mazda 6 is a sharp looking car and the Red color is striking.

I try and park these loaner cars away from all other cars to make sure that they don’t get dinged up in a parking lot. I should probably make sure that I park them away from those spaces that have oil spots so I get some better photos.

The car did look pretty nice in the freezing rain that we had ont he second day of the loan. Just a preview of the snow and rain to come.

On our actual trip the kids brought their new lap/activity desks. The car spacious enough where they could easily use these desks so that they could do activities and play while we drove.

Look at the front end of this car. Such a beauty. The Mazda 6 Grand Touring is a 184-hp, 2.5L SKYACTIV®-G DOHC 16-valve 4-cylinder engine with VVT. The car had great pickup and handled well, even on those icy days.

It is a Grand Touring vehicle and is great for a family of four with plenty of trunk space. We carried all of our Christmas gifts int he trunk and had room to place two large suitcases and a ton of other things inside when we returned home. My mom gave the kids each a pretty good sized suitcase and then we had two additional bags full of gifts. Everything fit great.

I love how everything is right at my fingertips in a Mazda. The center console and the dial that is integrated with the Mazda Connect™ Infotainment System. I was able to pair my phone with the car and make use of those features including the hands free calling, audio streaming and SMS text message audio delivery and reply. I could quickly set favorite radio stations and I love that look of the radio display, too.

there were quite a few safety features on the Mazda 6 but the ones that I know I made use of were the blind spot warnings that were quilt into the rearview side mirrors. The heads up display not only told me my speed but the posted speed, when there was a stop sign, when I was close to going from one lane to the next and when cars were coming up behind me on the highway. I could seven see if I was particularly close to another car ahead of me. Then there was the Lane Keep Assist and Lane departure warning features that were also useful.

The interior of the car was a nice white leather color. I don’t think that is something we would chose because of the two kids. they tend to make a bit of a mess when not being strictly told that this is a review car and we must keep it clean. They could only bring colored pencils and no crayons or markers on the trip because of this. The whole family liked the car a lot.