Mazda sticks to its guns, with new-look CX-5 surviving potential Crossover aversion
I mean, just look at the fact that the company is the only manufacturer in the world still to persevere with the unique Wankel rotary engine design — they even won Le Mans with one and I was lucky enough to see (and hear!) that 787B doing its thing up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed back in June. What a racket it made, but terribly impressive nonetheless.
Mazda also reinvented the two-seater roadster concept with the classic MX-5 at a time when such a thing was deemed implausible by pretty much everyone else — and the company gained an army of fans in doing so.
Another thing is that a little over seven years ago, Mazda promised to find a 30% improvement in fuel consumption across its model range by 2015 and it has gone and done it on the back of careful refinement of the traditional internal combustion engine. Hybrid be damned.
Mazda’s SkyActive technologies have thus achieved things other manufacturers failed to do and have given their cars green credentials that conventional wisdom said were impossible.
On top of that, it also dared to be different on the design front and the much-lauded ‘Kodo — Soul of Motion’ ethos to which it adheres makes its cars look pleasingly different from the majority of the pack.
Certainly there have been kinks in the great Mazda plan, especially as it was fairly slow to the table when it came to modern diesels. When it did eventually arrive, there were question marks about the size of the 2.2-litre unit when compared to what rivals offered — some of which were no more than 1,500cc in capacity, albeit relying on turbocharging.
But despite the ballyhoo of the naysayers, Mazda has stuck to its guns and stayed true to itself. Thus we now have a facelifted version of a car which found favour in this quarter despite what should, by now anyway, be a well-known aversion for the Crossover breed.
The exterior changes to the CX-5 have been fairly modest, so much so in fact that it is difficult to tell the new one from the old one. On the inside though, there have been some really big changes, all of which add greatly to the appeal of the car.
Another plus is that Mazda has done a great deal of work to reduce the NVH characteristics of the car and it is now obviously quieter and a lot more refined when on the road. That, added to the already sterling abilities — both in terms of power output and consumption levels — of the engine, ratchet up the appeal of this thing.
On the road — and despite the typically mutton-dressed-up-as-lamb 2WD masquerading as 4WD nature of the Crossover segment — the CX-5 drives really well. It was composed in pretty much any circumstance I threw at it, grip levels were excellent, there was no undue understeer (a generic fault of these things), and the steering was precise.
The 110 kW (150 bhp) output of the engine allows for a decent enough 0-100km/h time of 9.2 seconds and the 202km/h top speed is not to be ignored either. The design of the engine stands out from the pack in that it has a wider than normal power band, making the grunt easier to extract and the 4.6 l/100 km (60.8 mpg) consumption rate is as good if not better than most competitors.
This is a very good car, then, and one whose candle will stay resolutely alight despite the increasing competition railed against it.
COLLEY’S VERDICT
from €27,995 - €31,995 as tested in Executive trim.
some might think it too big for their needs but it still only costs €200 a year to tax.
the recent facelift might not have tweaked the look much, but it certainly boosted the kit levels.
one of the best in the class.
