2021 Mazda CX-5: Car and Driver 10Best

It's great to see the CX-5 win C&D's 10Best - owners here know how great these cars are. But when Mazda as a brand also claims #1 in Consumer Reports' annual car brand reliability rankings in the same year, you know they're doing something right. (y)
 
It's great to see the CX-5 win C&D's 10Best - owners here know how great these cars are. But when Mazda as a brand also claims #1 in Consumer Reports' annual car brand reliability rankings in the same year, you know they're doing something right. (y)
Absolutely, the CX-5 is very deserving.
 
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All these accolades are great and will keep the CX-5 selling fairly well, but if you monitor the mainstream online press, you still see a lot of complaints about the car's small interior, non-touchscreen infotainment, obsolete six-speed transmission, mediocre gas mileage, and lack of cool "must have" features like hybrid drivetrains and pano sunroofs. I know the rumor is that Mazda is going to move the car upscale with a RWD platform and inline-six engine, but they also need to make sure the car keeps up with competition overall. Most buyers in this segment buy on feature and value, not how engaging the driving experience is.

- Mark
 
All these accolades are great and will keep the CX-5 selling fairly well, but if you monitor the mainstream online press, you still see a lot of complaints about the car's small interior, non-touchscreen infotainment, obsolete six-speed transmission, mediocre gas mileage, and lack of cool "must have" features like hybrid drivetrains and pano sunroofs. I know the rumor is that Mazda is going to move the car upscale with a RWD platform and inline-six engine, but they also need to make sure the car keeps up with competition overall. Most buyers in this segment buy on feature and value, not how engaging the driving experience is.

- Mark
Obviously, there are a lot of us who don't care enough about anything listed to have swayed our purchases in a different direction. We bought it for what it is. Mazda doesn't want to own the car business, they seem to be happy with maintaining high production quality, great design, high fun-to-drive quotient and about 2% of US sales.
 
I'm pretty sure Mazda has heard that "be like everybody else" advice before... at least going back to the 1960's or 70's when I first became aware of the brand and its "march to the beat of a different drummer" philosophy.

Thank goodness they never listened. Mazda is unlikely to have survived trying to be just another boring pretender to Toyota's boring crown of white-bread sameness.

And we'd have missed out on so many great cars, from the RX-2/3/4's that I saw dominate their class running autocross in the 70's to the nifty 1st-gen RX-7 to the stunning last-gen RX-7 of the 90's to the Miata to MazdaSpeed to the current crop of sedans and CX's to the (presumably equally engaging) upcoming RWD's poised to be yet another counter-intuitive smash for those "in the know"!

Zoom Zoom!
 
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When we met, my wife had a late '90s MX-6 which she loved; then she got a 2008 Civic coupe which was fine but she missed the zoom zoom; she's very happy with her 2015 Juke AWD and perhaps one day she'll get a CX-30 as the CX-3 is a little short on power.

I'm new to Mazda but I agree with all previous comments! Before the CX-5 arrived, the Tiguan was considered the most fun to drive compact SUV (I know because I tried one) but the #1 complaint was it's too small. VW has made the current gen much bigger to satisfy most North American buyers but alas, they lost their original driving dynamics. Can't please everyone...

Coming from a larger vehicle (2017.5 Murano) I'm OK with the actual size of the CX-5 but just wish the glove box, console and cargo storage compartments were bigger, nothing major.
 
Mazda needs to sell more cars to survive long term, their total sales and finances are not the greatest. With the surging kia/hyndai/Genesis and their deep pockets I think mazda will struggle to gain any market share.
 
Ideally, Mazda stays Mazda, continues to improve overall as it has been AND grows marketshare. You want even better and cooler Mazdas in the future? They're going to need increasing sales and growth to fund the development of those new and improved models.

That said, Mazda deserves more marketshare, they have much larger competitors yet they produce highly competitive vehicles. I think more people are starting to take notice, how can you not with such great design, driving dynamics, value and reliability (relatively, no car company is perfect). :)
 
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