Mazda 6e road test: Looks the part, but is it 'Mazda' enough?

It’s certainly fair to record that the 6e looks the part: recognisably like a Mazda from without, and neat, smart and stylish enough to stand out in a traffic queue or supermarket car park. In the 6e – in a volte-face of conspicuous and incriminating proportions – most interaction is carried out directly via your finger on the touchscreen. It doesn’t take much to call to mind the understated but pervading sense of material quality of, say, a Mazda 3 or CX-30. There’s plenty of glossy black plastic on the car’s steering wheel spokes, too. Although Mazda claims that the functions on its bottom shortcut bar are driver-selectable, we couldn’t find a way to achieve this.