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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Mazda6 diesel engine delayed over low performance, still coming

Oh Mazda... we had many hopes for the promised diesel four-cylinder in the Mazda6, but those have remained largely unfulfilled, as the oil-burning powerplant has failed to appear on dealer lots following its 2012 LA Auto Show announcement. Despite engineering issues that forced the company to announce that the program was delayed back in September 2013, Mazda remains adamant that the 2.2-liter Skyactiv-D is still coming to our shores. "We're still very much committed to diesel," Mazda's North American CEO, Jim O'Sullivan, told Automotive News. "We are still working on getting the performance aspects up to where we want them, and we do have a plan – an engineering road map – to get it done." According to AN, Mazda's initial plan with the 2.2-liter diesel was to build an engine so clean it could get by without an aftertreatment system, which generally accounts for the price premium of diesel engines versus their gas counterparts. The new system has come with performance issues, though, necessitating the delays. "If [we were] a commodity brand and didn't care about that, it would be on the market right now," O'Sullivan told AN. "But I know the people were expecting something from us, expecting certain drive characteristics and performance, and I didn't want to disappoint them." While O'Sullivan's defense of the diesel Mazda is admirable, the exec stops short of giving us an indication of when the new engine will finally arrive.

New Mazda3 looks just like Mazda Kai concept in spy photos

Just a couple of weeks before the official reveal, one of our spy photographers caught the next-generation Mazda3 out testing in minimal camouflage. The car was a hatchback model, testing alongside a VW Golf and Audi A3, and was only wrapped in thin vinyl. As a result, we can clearly see that the new compact Mazda hatchback looks just like the stunning Kai concept from last year's Tokyo Motor Show. The car features effectively the same nose and profile of the concept. The main grille is larger than the current model, and it leans forward aggressively. The windshield is very low and sleek. The rear portion of the car is dominated by the very thick C-pillar that leans far forward, augmenting the car's athletic stance. The window sill at the rear kicks up sharply, and the rear window doesn't wrap around or bulge out, giving the car a very tight, taut shape. It's not just the outside of the 3 we get to see. We get a good look at the interior. It also looks very much like the Kai's interior, with the focus being the driver. The gauges are flanked by air vents that blend into the shape of the instrument binnacle. The rest of the dashboard is left as uncluttered as possible. The climate controls and vents all reside in the same long horizontal plane. The infotainment screen, which appears to be touch-sensitive based on one spy photo, is canted toward the driver. Mazda's rotary controller does return, as seen in the center console. Also in the center console is the manual shift knob, which we expect, or at least hope, will continue to be available in the U.S. We'll have answers to all our questions about the Mazda3 at the end of this month when it makes its debut at the L.A. Auto Show. We'll also see the sedan version of the car. The powertrain is the biggest mystery at the moment. Mazda showed the Kai with the Skyactiv-X engine, Mazda's spark-controlled compression-ignition gasoline engine. We've driven a development car with the engine, and Mazda seemed to intend the new Mazda3 to use it, but we're not sure if the engine will be ready for the car's launch. If not the Skyactiv-X engine, or perhaps in addition to, Mazda will probably use versions of its current engines. It could carry-over the naturally aspirated 2.0-liter and 2.5-liter four-cylinders currently used. The latter may use the cylinder deactivation now used on the Mazda6 and CX-5. We would love to see the company finally offer the turbocharged 2.5-liter engine from the Mazda6, CX-9, and now CX-5.