The interior of the Mazda CX 5 features a near-luxury level of quality.Please play along with my lottery fantasy.
Pretend you just won millions of dollars at Powerball and you're buying new vehicles for your whole family. You need them to fill the four-car garage at your new house on Chickamauga Lake.
Now, for purposes of our game, let's say you can only fill the garage with vehicles from one car manufacturer.
So, which company will it be?
I'd be tempted to skip the luxury brands and head straight to my friendly, neighborhood Mazda store.
For starters, I'd buy the sumptuous new CX-9 seven-passenger SUV for my wife, a curvaceous Mazda6 midsize sedan for my own commute to work, and a CX-5 small SUV for my soon-to-be-licensed 15-year-old son. Meanwhile, for my car-loving 10-year-old son, I would purchase a Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible two-seater, which I would bequeath to him after a six-year break-in period during which I would use the Miata for hair-raising Sunday drives in the scenic Sequatchie Valley.
And I'd be feeling good about my purchase because I could get all four Mazdas for about the cost of one tricked-out Mercedes S-Class convertible or a high-end Land Rover Range Rover.
A key to this all-Mazda garage would be selling my older son on the CX-5 SUV, the subject of today's test drive. He is hormonally drawn to more exotic vehicles, specifically Ford Mustangs and used Hummers. I would try to sell him on the CX-5's shimmering Soul Red metallic paint, its gorgeous 10-spoke alloy wheels, its upscale interior and its surprisingly sporty road manners.
The CX-5 is simply the most refined small SUV on the market, in our view, which is probably why it's Mazda's best-selling vehicle worldwide.
For 2017, the CX-5 has been redesigned, but most of the changes are just tweaks, really, an extra coat of polish on an already stylish ride. Base CX-5 Sports start about $24,000 and our top-of-the-line, CX-5 Grand Touring model with all-wheel-drive has a bottom line of $34,380.
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Fast facts
- Model: Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring AWD - Exterior color: Soul Red - Interior color: Parchment - Engine: 2.5-liter, four-cylinder - Horsepower: 187 - Transmission: six-speed automatic - Fuel economy: 29 mpg highway, 23 mpg city - Local Dealer: Tim Short Mazda - Price (as tested): $34,380
STYLING AND FEATURES
Regular readers of this column will know that I am transfixed by Mazda's Soul Red paint color. In my hypothetical, lottery-driven shopping spree, all of my Mazda purchases would be with Soul Red exterior paint paired with Parchment leather interiors.
The Soul Red exterior sets off Mazda's handsome exterior design theme, which emphasizes a prominent grille and sculpted side panels. The interior of the CX-5, meanwhile, has been significantly upgraded for 2017, resulting in a vibe that I'd describe as half-Audi/half-Jaguar.
While competitors in this class try to dazzle with a Star Fleet-like arrays of buttons and switches, the CX-5 keeps it simple. A 7-inch touch screen erupts from the center of the dash and bundles the controls for most of the telephone, navigation and sound-system functions.
Mazda's beefy, three-spoke steering wheel provides just the right grip for the car's razor sharp steering, and the analog gauges have a nice, no-nonsense look. One instrumentation improvement we like for 2017 is a head's-up display that projects the speedometer readings onto the windshield. Before, Mazda incorporated a little pop-up plastic screen on the dash that always seemed flimsy and hard to adjust.
The off-white seating surface, meanwhile, creates a nice contrast with the black dash and door panels, giving the interior visual dimensions that are impossible in a mono-color interior. If you didn't know you were in a Mazda, you'd think you were driving a vehicle costing tens of thousands of dollars more.
Other features on our tester include a power moon roof, Mazda's radar cruise control, heated front and rear seats, and a heated steering wheel.
DRIVING IMPRESSIONS
Mazda, which is known for its "zoom-zoom" driving dynamics, has proven again and again that you don't have to offer V-6 engines or turbocharging to create a spirited driving experience in smaller vehicles. It's more about precision steering, taut suspensions, crisp transmissions shifts, light-weight components and efficient four-cylinder engines.
Mazda does plan to introduce a diesel-engine powered CX-5 this fall, but it will surely sell in small numbers.
The CX-5's 2.5-cylinder, four-cylinder engine makes a modest 187 horsepower, but still pushes the CX-5 from zero-to-60 mph in just 8.4 seconds, according to Motor Trend. The CX-5 weighs only about 3,500 pounds which means it doesn't need a ton of horsepower.
Unlike so many competitors that have switched to gearless, continuously variable transmissions, the CX-5 has an old-school six-speed automatic, which works just fine.
Safety tech is available in abundance. Our Grand Touring, all-wheel-drive tester has blind-spot monitoring, brake support, lane-keep-assist, rear cross-traffic warning and more.
BOTTOM LINE
The CX-5 Grand Touring is a quiet, refined, fun-to-drive little SUV. In a culture where small crossovers - not sedans - have become the default family vehicles, the CX-5 stands out as the thinking-person's SUV.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.