2014 Chevrolet Impala LT vs. 2013 Chrysler 300S, 2013 Dodge Charger SXT, 2013 Hyundai Azera, 2014 Kia Cadenza, 2013 Toyota Avalon XLE

Some people will undoubtedly argue that living to an advanced age means signing up for a slow agony if you must become a vegan or endure routine yogurt enemas to do it. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg famously disagreed. The co-inventor of Corn Flakes and a health nut a hundred years before Whole Foods sold its first kumquat, Kellogg made it to 91 preaching a steadfast diet of nuts and twigs and a watery lifestyle of sitz baths and regular colon cleansing. Victorian-era visitors to the good doctor’s enormous sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, were presented with his lengthy list of items to avoid, including meat, seafood, eggs, milk, coffee, tea, mustard, vin­egar, pepper, chocolate, tobacco, alcohol, iced drinks, “complicated meals,” stress, worry, and heavy clothing.

We might be inclined to add any near-$40,000 sedan that brings the heart rate down to a virtual standstill. That simply can’t be healthy. And yet such vehicles as the Toyota Avalon have been doing it for years. They persist for a generally older segment of buyers wanting big-car coddling in a plain brown wrapper, without all the pretension and assumed upcharging associated with a luxury nameplate.

Economics and two market oddities make our six-car test a surprisingly large one. The concertmaster is the Avalon, a sort of super Camry created to bridge the gap between Toyota and Lexus. Back in 1995, it proved that a front-drive mainstream mid-sizer could be pulled out, frosted with some chrome, and priced higher to yield more lucre. The Avalon is the fourth generation, it’s all-new, and, for the first time, it’s somewhat athletically shaped.

Where Toyota goes, Hyundai chases. The front-drive Azera is basically a ballooned Sonata, except that the new Azera has a 3.3-liter V-6 while Sonatas offer only four-cylinder engines. And where Hyundai goes, its sibling rival Kia inexorably follows. Kia’s own version of the Azera is the 2014 Cadenza, bearing entirely separate sheetmetal and interior treatments but with the same basic equipment and métier.

The home team is represented in part by the Chevrolet Impala, which qualifies for big-car status now that it rides on GM’s stretched Epsilon platform along with the Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac XTS. The two oddities here are also from Detroit. The Chrysler 300S and Dodge Charger SXT are both rear-drive, and neither one is derived from a smaller model.

In fact, present-day Chrysler has no credible seat at the mid-size-sedan feast, having left a hole between the Dodge Avenger and the Dodge Charger (and between the Chrysler 200 and 300) big enough to drive a quarter-million Honda Accords through. While Chrysler is attending to that problem, it is trying to squeeze the last drops of market mileage from the Charger and 300 by adding a new eight-speed automatic to the 3.6-liter V-6 spec sheet that promises better fuel economy. Conspicuous by its absence is the face-lifted Ford Taurus, mainly because the folks in Dearborn couldn’t find us one with a V-6 to test.

Do any of these relaxed-fit and middlebrow cars put us on the road to Wellville? We hit the trail to Battle Creek in search of an answer and an unforgettable yogurt enema.