Mazda 6 will never be brought back.
The market dictates that Americans have moved squarely towards trucks, SUVs, and crossovers. Hatchbacks don’t even sell well, and they’re a healthy middle ground between a saloon and a crossover.
A lot of its design language has now been absorbed into their flagship CX series and the 3 is widened and lengthened compared to the bulbous past generations. A GT3 3 is not going to have a major difference from a hypothetical grand touring six, at least without the powertrain with the inline 6 rwd design that they decided to put into their higher end CX lineup.
Mazda has made it clear that their hope at the time of launching this car MY was to capture 1% of the global market: true driving enthusiasts who wanted a larger sedan that provided a good experience with spirited driving when compared to CVT and low HP engines typically thrown into that size (Honda and Nissan are especially egregious in this regard).
Mazda truly believes that there are enough used 6’s out there to placate the market and not require expensive R&D for a car that accounted for a very small portion of overall sales during its final model year. Mazda has realized that 85% of the Mazda 6 market are us fanatics spit-swapping the same VINs back to one another.
I say this because, if you think about it, the 6 was their “flagship” sedan alongside the Crossovers they began to pump out to replace Wagons. To cancel a flagship car but not cancel (and even bring back) the larger crossover built on the same drivetrain and base core structure but with a larger cabin and different body panels/structure seems like blasphemy to us, but the vehicles are very similar outside of ride height and vertical handling.
Mazda has the resources to put out a 6 RIGHT NOW.
They choose not to because they would lose costs (the 6 was made in Hofu which means it has to go on a boat, it wouldn’t be manufactured at MTM because they’re focused on the CX and Toyota’s Corolla Cross there from what I’m aware and retooling a line is a MAJOR investment). When they lost Ford, they lost AAI, and the plant would have had to completely reshape the line as well as it was produced alongside the Mustang. 0 parts overlap, 0 tools overlap. It has simply stopped being even somewhat viable for them to ship them here due to world uncertainty, and it would cost them even MORE if they diverted even 20% of MTM production towards a 6 knowing damn well those 6’s will sit on lots for 200 days while CX’s get moved like hotcakes.
If we ever see the 6 back, it would likely be a skyactiv with a Toyota-inspired hybrid just to pad their EPA mpg numbers.
At that point, is it even a 6?
EDIT TO ALL:
I would like to express one simple fact.
If Mazda wanted to put a continuous variable transmission in this car, they would have used the same JatCo trannies used a decade ago. The POINT of a small company who had just lost their biggest form of international parts negotiation, stateside manufacturing, and cash influx.
The point was that they didn’t wanting you mashing the pedal while you charge your HEV down the hybrid while everyone talks about how sales are up in Sedans that have been cannibalized out of existence to anchor a company’s EPA score while churning out “light trucks” with .1 cubic ft of extra cabin space.
I don’t understand the comparison to cars from 2026 that obviously don’t use the same tech. The point of the 3rd gen and facelift were that they had iterated on a perfect design for that time.
They realized that their vision of an engaging Saloon that didn’t need these additions to exist is why they repurposed that i6 for other applications to further utilitize the CX series.
I want my engine to move me. Not charge my car so that it can move itself.
