Mazda's Answer to Troubled Times

Mazda 6i Sport Sedan

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. -- I toured this bedroom community in the 2009 Mazda 6, the latest entry in the hotly contested market for mid-size, mid-priced family sedans.

It was an instructive drive, one that revealed much about our economically wobbly, politically and personally uncertain times.

Consider the car.

I chose the version that will constitute at least 60 percent of the 2009 Mazda 6 sedan sales in the United States -- the Mazda 6i Sport with the 2.5-liter, inline four-cylinder, 170-horsepower engine and five-speed automatic transmission. Ten to 11 percent of Mazda 6 sales will probably come from four-cylinder models with six-speed manual transmissions.

That means barely 30 percent of 2009 Mazda 6 sales would come from 6s sedans, with 272-horsepower, 3.7-liter V-6 engines. And that, some Mazda officials privately admit, is being optimistic in the matter of projected V-6 sales.

The world has changed, and car companies such as Mazda are scrambling like crazy to figure out what those changes mean.

Consider this community.

In late 2002, when Mazda introduced the first version of its 6 car, this town straddling the Los Angeles and Ventura County border was rolling in irrational exuberance. Housing prices were high and rising higher. Consumer confidence, in large measure supported by easy credit, rose along with housing costs. America's quest for bigger, better, faster and more of everything was on full display here.

Back then, Mazda officials thought they misjudged the market -- bringing forth a Mazda 6 sedan that was smaller and a tad less powerful than some mid-size rivals. In 2004, the company also offered hatchback and wagon versions of the Mazda 6 to a market that appeared to want neither.

Having learned what the company said were "lessons . . . from the first Mazda 6 and Mazda's newer successful vehicles -- especially the Mazda CX-7 and the award-winning CX-9," Mazda executives were determined to deliver a new Mazda 6 that was bigger, sportier and more powerful than its predecessors.

This they did. But a day's drive around Westlake Village and surrounding communities raises a question about whether they did the right thing.

The boom seems to have busted here. The place looks just as pretty, just as affluent as it has in years past. But there literally are signs of stress -- posted gasoline prices as high as $4.39 a gallon for regular unleaded; and here and in neighboring Ventura County, there are bank sale signs on homes locals say were purchased only a year or so ago.