2.2 liter diesel engine, 4WD, 1600kg, nice specification all round. What does CX-5 really feel after an one-day driving.
Just as the Mazda MX-5 Roadster review, my test will recove these 4 points: Exterior, Space, Interior, Driving. Although the overall score is not a simple average score, just judged by my personal direct sense.
1.Exterior ★★★★☆
I love the whole body balance of CX-5 very much. Since all the Mazda cars which has been released after 2012 were designed within the same face style, the sports feeling of all the Mazda cars keeps familiar. However, here the CX-5, the biggest one owns this face, gives me a sort of odd. The most obvious problem is that the noise of the car is on a fairly high position. This will not distract your driving view, but just the radiator just looks too big in my opinion. The we talk about the side arrangement, the sports style gives CX-5 smaller side windows, especially the rear side windows. This effect plus the wide body, makes the driver a kind of lacking confidence when cutting the corners or changing the driving lines. Okay, there is a RVM (Rear Vehicle Monitorin) system in it, I will talk it later.
Space ★★★★☆
Mazda CX-5 is definitely a big car. So I expect more for its space performance. First the rear trunk, nearly perfect: big opening door, nice flat bottom sheet, the rear seats are easy to put down, no spar wheel but repair-kit. I can comfortably put 4 big suitcases into the trunk without any sacrifice of my rear view from the center back mirror.
Then when it comes to the rear seats space, there is another story. The score of comfortable of the rear seats is just regular. The seats themselves are nice enough, well made leather material as well as right softness. The support of bottom and legs is just comfortable enough, however the support of back is suitable enough. The back part of the seat can not be adjust, I don not mind it use some of the rear trunk space, which makes a long ride by setting in the rear a little suffering. And don miss this point: no air conditioner vent in the back side. I will complain about the air conditioner system more in the interior part.
Interior ★★★★☆
Let me say some super nice points first: texture quality, Navigation and media system, control dials even the ones on the door side, active safety systems: RVM, LDWS (Lane Departure Warning System), MRCC (Mazda Radar Cruise Control)….. These all make it enjoy when sitting on the front seat of CX-5. The CX-5 I drove was the top class, and of course Mazda shows what a top class car should be. By the way the sound system, I mean the speakers of the CX-5 is great, my favorite musics sounds details and well balanced on a 60 percent volume, a normal BGM or navigation only needs a 30% volume.
Then the bad, air conditioner is too tricky to adjust. The control of temperature, wind flow of the whole big cabin costed me 30 minutes and I gave up. The auto button is unscene, it can just stand for several minutes and it does nothing actually. And the smartphone drawer is too near to the shift bar, no easy to reach my phone when it was plugged the USB or AUX inside the drawer.
As you can see, the bad of the CX-5’s interior is no huge problem at all, and can be easy fix by a update of the next year. So it can be nearly perfect.
Driving ★★★☆☆
Engine, the 2.2 liter diesel engine is a powerful one. The super ｔorque performance let the big body not heavy at all, every cornering and stating acceleration has swiftly been done. But the lag is a bit too big. The power flows out after about 0.5 second my pushing the accelerator pedal. So a traffic jam city condition can be annoying. i-Stop system stops the engine when the car stays still, nice one.
Brake, sometimes even better than the MX-5 roadster! Nice brake pedal linear setting, easy to stop accurately and smoothly as thinking.
Chassis, with the huge 19 inch wheels, I can expect the struggle of the suspension, and yes it is struggling. The road information comes from the tire is lagged, the crest of tarmac feels just not directly transferred. Little vibrations go around the cabin, noise and help nothing with driving. I think a 17 inch wheel will fit CX-5 better.