Hey guys, a good friend of mine has been thinking about buying a new car for the past few months. I recommended to him Toyota/Honda/ Subaru or Mazdas. He does alot of high way driving for work (wants good MPG) and has a cabin up in the mountains (wants AWD for snow).
He's currently looking at a new CX-5. How are they? I like Mazdas quality, seems like they're doing a good job overall as a car manufacture, unlike most companies. I see it has 2 engine options, NA & turbo. I get NA engines will most likely outlast a turbo, but are either of these plagued with specific issues?
Looks like they have good reviews from car & driver etc, but I want to hear opinions here.
Thanks!
- Nick
I personally like Mazda’s overall approach to cars: the car and driver as one. And it shows in Mazda feel, performance, and ergonomics.
I have two friends with the CX-5, the previous generation and the current generation, and they both love them, with no major problems.
I do have a long term concern with direct injection engines: carbon build up on the valves and intake. But that isn’t just a Mazda thing, that’s any direct injection engine.
While I am a huge Toyota fan for reliability, their styling and ergonomics are horrible compared to Mazda.
(wants good MPG) and has a cabin up in the mountains (wants AWD for snow).
Well that's an era in which the Mazda CX-5 struggles, it only gets 26 mpg combined.
I like Mazdas quality, seems like they're doing a good job overall as a car manufacture, unlike most companies.
Mazda has peaked around 2015 and since their car quality has gone a bit downhill.
Testing a brand new Mazda 3 I herd rattling and the gearbox felt more "confused" than a Corolla.
I would still buy that car, if they would ever have them in stock, but not the greatest quality.
NA & turbo
Avoid the turbo like the plague.
They had issues with the engine head (valve seats) and they burned literal gallons of oil.
The regular naturally aspirated engine is decent, cylinder deactivation, the insane 14:1 compression ratio, GDi and other crap they put onto it does pose some long term issues tho.
Looks like they have good reviews from car & driver etc, but I want to hear opinions here.
The thing I do not like about Mazdas is the somewhat dated tech.
The heads up display is nice but the driver gauge cluster and the infotainment systems are not great (far from it)
Also the self lane centering on Mazdas in general doesn't feel great same for the radar cruise and for some reason the entire system is disabled until you get to 40mph? (so it's also almost useless in traffic), it felt even a bit dangerous, in that aspect it's way worse than other companies.
(Self lane centering seems like a minor concern until you get a car with it and can't even thing about driving one without it!)
Overall, it's a decent car - I'm not sure if that would be my go to, but it's definitely decent.
But a well equipped Mazda CX-5 is only 3 grand less than a base level Highlander or a base Lexus UX250h...
So I'm really not sure if it's a good value proposition, a RAV4 (even a Hybrid) is less expensive and better equipped.
