Let?s face it: The current automotive climate breeds lazy drivers (see automatic cruise control, lane-keeping assist, and the decreasing availability of manual transmissions). So it seems incumbent upon us to celebrate genuine advancements that improve a driver’s ability to actually control a car with one’s own appendages, whether going fast on a racetrack or taking the family to the beach. There’s an interesting new one over at Mazda, where the driving forecast is sunny.
The brand from Hiroshima ranks remarkably high on the overall fun-to-drive scale, especially considering its size and resources. The Mazda 3 and the MX-5 Miata reside on the current 10Best Cars list and the Mazda 6 is a previous winner. The company’s SUVs drive like cars, and its interiors deliver visual punch a weight-class above their prices. In short, Mazda cares about making cars that people actually find enjoyable to drive themselves, which is why we flew to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, outside of Monterey, California, to go around the track at a mere 30 mph. Mazda wouldn?t even tell us what G-Vectoring Control (GVC), the technology it planned to showcase, actually was before letting us sample it in the 2017-spec Mazda 6. The day started with laps of an impromptu oval in the parking lot at a blistering 20 mph. An engineer would switch the GVC on and off from the passenger seat. At first, GVC just feels as if it makes the steering a little heftier. But after a few of these cruise...