There’s a lot to be said about how far SUVs have come over the past decade or more. The Mazda CX-9 is a prime example of a definitive move towards a premium offering without a premium price tag.
The 2018 Mazda CX-9 is a huge departure from the model it replaces, and leads with Mazda’s mantra of a luxury offering at a mass consumer price bracket.
From the outside it’s impossible to confuse the CX-9 for anything else with its defined nose that sits pointy and further forward at the top, with a gaping mouth that proudly wears the Mazda wings.
While the CX-9 kicks off from $43,890 (plus on-road costs), the top-specification CX-9 Azami all-wheel drive tested here caps off the range with a price tag of $64,790 (plus on-road costs).
At that price point it competes with cars like the Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, Land Rover Discovery TD4 S, Mitsubishi Pajero Exceed, Nissan Pathfinder Ti and the Toyota Kluger Grande (two-wheel drive). So it’s certainly sitting with some decent company.
Powering the entire CX-9 range is a 2.5-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine that produces 170kW of power and 420Nm of torque through a six-speed automatic gearbox. The official fuel consumption figure is 8.8 litres per 100km.
To put those figures into perspective, many manufacturers need to go down the path of turbocharged diesel engines to produce that kind of torque. Mazda achieves it with an efficient four-cylinder engine, which means you have the benefit of torque (the push in the back you get when you accelerate), plus fuel efficiency.
In real-world testing – that’s a mix of highway and city driving – we were able to achieve around 9L/100km, which sits within cooee of the official fuel consumption claim.
Don’t be deceived by the stylish angles – the Mazda CX-9 is a big car. It comes in at just over five metres long and almost two metres wide. And it needs to be that size to handle the seven passengers it caters for.