What is it?
The Mazda CX-5 is the second-generation version of the brand’s best-selling crossover.
Key features:
Interior upgrades, revised styling, higher quality throughout.
Our view:
Improved in all areas, the new Mazda CX-5 is a definite contender for crossover buyers, particularly in diesel form.
Ask any car enthusiast to name a Mazda and they will very likely reply MX-5 – the roadster dominates the Japanese brand’s public image. But Mazda sells a great many more examples each year of a much less obvious model – the CX-5 crossover.
Launched in 2012, the CX-5 has become Mazda’s best-selling car. In Europe, the three CX crossover models account for half of all Mazdas sold, while in the UK it’s a third – because we buy so many MX-5s.
So there is no doubting the importance of the crossover as the second-generation model arrives on UK roads in July. It is all-new, but it is also an evolution of the current car.
When the previous CX-5 arrived in 2012, it was described as a bridge between Mazda’s fifth and sixth generation UK model range. The car debuted the first elements of the brand’s ‘Kodo – Soul of Motion’ design language, and also the first of the efficiency-seeking SkyActiv Technology programme in the chassis.
Today every Mazda is 100% SkyActiv, including engines, and 100% Kodo. And we are told the new CX-5 is again a bridge – it previews what is to come in the seventh generation of Mazda cars, dubbed by UK boss Jeremy Thomson “as big a step forward,” as was Gen Six.
Next page: Design
