Mazda CX-80 review: The premium seven-seater SUV that’s turning heads

Let’s get straight to the point here: This is one fantastic car, and one which is so good it is capable of making considerable inroads into those segments occupied by upmarket German or Swedish products.

It is not often Mazda dealers will talk in hushed tones about “conquest sales”, but in this instance they can do so confidently.

This is most certainly not a car which reflects the zeitgeist of the modern automotive age — the era of EVs/url] and PHEVs and hybrids. It’s a turbodiesel, for God’s sake. And who in their right mind would buy one of them at present?

Well, you might be surprised. 

There are plenty of people out there who want a diesel; many are simply sick of being told what they can and cannot do, and that they have to abandon years of faithful service from their beloved DERVs — that’s an acronym, by the way, for diesel-engined road vehicles.

Sure, we all know that the planet has to be saved, but why blame workhorse diesels for everything that’s wrong with the world?

Certainly, in times past, they were dirty and smelly and belched foul fumes wherever they went — but there have been huge improvements in the genre in recent years, and the old images of diesels are by now a thing of the past.

Engine manufacturers and engine management experts, such as Bosch, have done a pile of work to try and clean diesel’s act up a bit. While they have achieved a lot, it is possibly too late to persuade lawmakers that oil-burners are anything other than politically and morally unacceptable.

For a whole raft of people, however, the scapegoating of diesels is nothing other than a shame. After all, these things give incredible economy figures, last forever, and take the sort of punishment most other power sources would not.

Most manufacturers, however, recognise that the diesel age is at an end, or at very least getting there quickly.

They have either stopped making them or reduced production to a fraction of what it used to be. Mazda, however, have chosen a different path.

This straight six “e-SkyActiv D” as it is officially called, is said to be one of the cleanest diesel engines ever made; it has some 254bhp, a whopping 550Nm of torque and CO2 emissions of just 148g/km.

Mazda says it is aimed at people who want an efficient long-distance driving car with a great towing abilities (its maximum capacity is a 2,500kg-braked trailer).

I can already see any number of farmers sitting up and taking more notice here, because those figures are grist to their mill and many are intent on maxing out the EU derogation on Ice units until 2035.

However, without wishing to bore you stupid with technobabble, some of the innovative technologies utilised are quite interesting. 

One such is the deployment of what’s called Distribution-Controlled Partially Premixed Compression Ignition (DCPCI), which helps the engine achieve thermal efficiency of over 40%, which is particularly good.

It improves economy and stretches the driving range; in the case of the 254bhp version (there is also a 200bhp version), it makes for a 5.7 l/100km figure (that’s 49.12mpg in old money) which is pretty decent by anyone’s standards. This means the car will run for well over 800km on a tank of fuel.

The fact it also uses mild hybrid technology also helps a little with its “green” credentials, and the fact its emission levels are so low means it only attracts an annual road tax here of €270 — which is no at all bad for a unit its size.

The CX-80 is the biggest car Mazda makes and it looks really well, to be honest. It is a real seven-seater — you don’t have to be one of Snow White’s vertically challenged mates to get into the rearmost seats — and while it is based on the CX-60, it is longer and taller.

For such a big car, it has both style and presence — not something that’s a given with large SUVs — and it also manages to do without some of the awful wheelarch plastic cladding that seems to go with that territory.

That upmarket look will undoubtedly help sales and particularly the “conquests” we mentioned Mazda dealers getting so excited about earlier. 

Customers from Volvo, BMW, and Mercedes will feel unashamed coming to Mazda because not only do both the CX-60 and 80 look the part, but they are specified and built to match the expectations of those who would normally part with their cash for German or Swedish hardware.

Those people will also find their expectations met when they take this car out on the road, such are its capabilities. Initial reviews of the little brother highlighted criticisms of the car’s on-road dynamics, complaining that the suspension got unsettled when asked questions.

Having driven the CX-60, I did not find that to be particularly true — how could anything not be unsettled when tasked with the Irish road network? However, Mazda has worked hard to allay people’s concerns in this area and made several changes to the suspension design.

The net effect is a car which rides like a limo, but handles with verve and especially so for something so big.

A very notable characteristic is the smoothness of the driving experience, as the engine is silky and so too is the ride. There are, it appears, few rough edges to this machine. The fact too that it is a 4x4 provides an added feeling of security about its abilities.

It is possible to configure this as a six-seater, with two “captains” chairs in the middle row, but even without this option, the seats there are comfortable and roomy and also slide fore and aft to create more room for the passengers in the third row.

The panoramic roof and its sunblind do not detract greatly from the headroom available. Also, if you’re sick of mind-numbing infotainment systems, you will find the one here to be excellently analogue and a treat to use. Everything is accessible via a centre console system redolent of the old BMW iDrive system, but nothing like as complicated.

Some punters did complain about the wood finishes looking a bit like the old, laminated chipboard cupboards in your mother’s kitchen — which I thought a little harsh — and, overall, I thought the décor to be pleasing both to the eye and to the touch. 

The interior is a very pleasant place to be and the overall comfort levels once again have a very premium feel.

One question did bother me slightly about this car and that was simply: Why did they bother? If, in the CX-60, you have an excellent SUV with an excellent engine, why simply stuff two more seats into it?

Sure, there will be a market for such a vehicle — but only a very small one you’d have thought.

With all the seats deployed in the CX-80, boot space is very tight indeed, but when the rearmost ones are lowered, the trunk is huge and will accommodate pretty much anything short of an Ikea warehouse. In the CX-60, that’s the case anyway.

A small quibble perhaps, but if I was in the market for one of these two products, it is the smaller one I’d be going for.

In any event, Mazda has once again come up with something that’s beyond the thinking of most mainstream manufacturers and, with that silky turbodiesel under the hood, it is an automatic winner that will almost certainly appeal to the anti-EV or hybrid buyers or those who want the simple luxury of a ‘normal’ engine.

Either way, this is a winner.