Mazda cares a lot about its cars as well as its customers, but that doesn’t stop Mazda from making a few mistakes here and there. This is especially true for the Mazda6, which, while it still is a great car, has had its share of issues in the past. Here are the worst problems that owners have complained about before.

The 2004 Mazda6’s engine failures

While this wasn’t the most common problem that 2004 Mazda6 owners encountered, Car Complaints does say that this was by far the worst problem that any Mazda6 had in general. This engine failure problem was one of those issues that, while it wasn’t common, when it did happen, it did a lot of damage – both to the car and to the owner’s wallet.

In fact, Car Complaints said that, at an average mileage of 98,000 miles, many 2004 Mazda6 owners said that their engines just died. Since most people who are driving a 2004 model are probably driving around a beater, many owners on Car Complaints chose to just buy a new car as a way to fix this problem. It’s not clear how much money those owners spent on their new car, but it must’ve been significant.

The 2004 Mazda6 owners who chose to replace their engines still paid a hefty fee, too. In fact, Car Complaints says that the average owner paid $3,800 to fix their vehicle’s broken engine. This high price tag for a repair, combined with how frequent this problem happens, made it the worst problem for Mazda6 owners to encounter.

The 2014 Mazda6’s transmission issues

Unlike many other issues that Mazda6 owners reported about their cars, this particular problem for the 2014 Mazda6 happened to moderately used cars rather than heavily used ones. According to Car Complaints, with an average of 55,000 miles on the odometer, many 2014 model owners said that their transmission failed. 

Obviously, transmission failure is a pretty significant issue to fix. Not only that, but it was happening to relatively new cars before they had hit 100,000 miles. On top of that, for the 2014 Mazda6, transmission issues were the most common problems that the owners faced. Indeed, Car Complaints reports that the average owner chose to simply replace their car’s transmission. The average price for that was $3,250. 

Due to that high price tag, how common it was for the 2014 Mazda6, as well as how relatively young the cars were, this transmission issue was the second-worst issue for Mazda6 owners, according to Car Complaints. 

The 2008 model’s transmission failures

Car Complaints actually loved the 2008 Mazda6 so much that it gave it the “Seal of Awesome” award. Despite that achievement, Car Complaints also says that the 2008 Mazda was the source of the third-worst issue that Mazda6 owners may have to face.

Just like with the 2014 version, that issue had to do with its transmission. Once again, the transmission on the 2008 Mazda6 would simply fail at times. That said, unlike the 2014 Mazda6, the average mileage of these failures was around 130,000 miles, which means that they were very used cars by that point.

Despite that difference in endurance, the transmissions in both the 2014 and the 2008 Mazda6 had another similar problem, it just cost their owners a lot of money to fix them. Car Complaints once again says that the most common repair was to just replace the whole transmission. And once again, that would cost a lot of money. On average, Car Complaints said that owners of the 2008 Mazda6 paid about $3,630 to replace their transmission.