Mazda CX-60 Review 2024

 Mazda CX-60 Review 2024 - G'day I'm Belal this is the Mazda Cx60 and it could be the right car for you. if you're looking for a luxurious Suv that from a mainstream brand rather than from a luxury brand because this has luxury brand pricing but a Mazda badge so does it live up to its price and is it a good car? Stay tuned and you'll find out the Cx-60 is available in three different trim grades with three different powertrains per trim.

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Mazda CX-60 Price

So that means there's nine different available options in Australia for the Mazda Cx60 and pricing starts just under 60000 US Dollars for the entry level Evolve version. Now that's for the petrol Evolve it's a few grand more for the diesel and quite a bit more if you want the plug-in hybrid version. Now it comes as standard with some pretty nice stuff.

 You get Led front lighting, 18 inch alloy wheels, a 10.25 inch screen inside with Apple carplay, Android auto now there's Also a bunch of really nice features on the inside, climate control, that sort of stuff but it comes with manual seats and fake leather trim. At 60 ish thousand dollars that seems a bit rude to me. and then if you step up to this grade here which is the Gt, you get a few extras on the outside that you'll notice 20 inch wheels. You get Led rear lighting as well. You get leather trim on the inside. 

You also get electric front seat adjustment, a electric steering wheel adjustment, heated front seats as well and it does feel like you're getting something that is a bit more worthy of the price tag that this car has and then a few grand more for the diesel and much more expensive for the plug-in hybrid which is this one here.

I'm going to tell you all about plug-in hybrid stuff soon and at the top of the range is the Azami version. Now it is the one you buy if you want all the luxury elements that you can possibly get in a Mazda in Australia at this kind of money this car has. The Izami spec is very very impressive in terms of what you're getting and the plug-in hybrid version is going to be very close to 100 Grand on the road. So it is a pretty expensive Mazda, but it does have a few interesting competitors that aren't really competitors I'm going to tell you about them. Now naming alternatives to this car is pretty difficult because there's nothing else really quite like it there's no other mainstream brand.

What's the best competitor?

that's gone out and said well. We're going to have straight sixes and a plug-in hybrid. We're going to tackle the luxury segment but with a Mazda badge anyway. It's definitely an interesting option in the market and there are some really interesting Alternatives if you ask me. The first one I would recommend would be the Lexus Nx. 

Now that car is not just a Rav4 dressed up well, some parts of it are, but it's a really really good luxury Suv feels more luxury and premium to me than this car does. and it also has the choice of hybrid and plug-in hybrid and regular turbo petrol engines as well so it could be the right car for you.

Another option you might want to check out is the Genesis Gv70, a gorgeous looking Suv with the choice of some pretty decent turbocharged engines but it's also got a fully electric version. obviously it's quite expensive the top spec version is over 120 000 bucks but it does have an Ev option which this car doesn't have another alternative you might want to have a look at but maybe you haven't thought of if you're looking at this kind of car is the Bmw X1. 

That car has the choice of a three-cylinder turbo or a four-cylinder petrol turbo. Now I reckon the four cylinder is the peak but it's also got a fully electric version sitting at the top of the range which this car doesn't have and it's about the same price as the top spec version of this for the full electric one so it could be a really good option for you if you're willing to think outside of the box the Cx-60 is actually pretty big for a midsize Suv.

Is it the right size?

it's as big as some three row or seven seat Suvs in this sort of segment. It's just over 4.7 meters long so it's not little people It's got a pretty long wheelbase as you'll see there and it's also got a bunch of different available colors so this one is rhodium white which does cost extra but there are three versions that cost extra and a few that don't cost any extra at all and I like that. but Mazda is starting to creep into the well. all the premium ones should have premium pricing Anyway, show you the back row in a sec. But first let's check out this boot and see if it's big enough. Let's Talk about boot space. This is a pretty large car. 

Doesn't have the biggest boot though. 477 liters of cargo capacities. What you get in all grades of the Cx60. Uh, which is interesting because the plug-in hybrid version doesn't get a spare wheel. uh it just gets a repair kit. The other versions do get a space saver spare wheel so there's not too much really to show you here.

that's your charger bag in there there's a little bit of storage underneath the floor there if you need it and some netted sections, one netted section on the side here. If you buy the plug-in hybrid version, you also get a PowerPoint in the boot which is nice to see and Mazda has these really clever little uh levers? I guess you'd call them they're like door handles so you can just easily remotely fold those seats forward for you. They're not electric and I actually like that.

Mazda CX-60 Interior

So does it feel like the money that Mazda is asking on the inside To a degree? It does. but it also doesn't. feel like a huge leap forward for the brand in my opinion because well some of these elements yeah they're nice but they're not necessarily at the same standard as some of the other high-end Brands when it comes to. I guess the materials namely there's some elements to the materials that I really am not a huge fan of. 

This sort of plasticky stuff down here on the glove box and on the dashboard just pulls down the ambience just a little bit. and I mean look, you might not think that that's an issue and it probably isn't for most people, but I'm just thinking of the money that you're potentially spending on this car and whether it feels like it should right now there's.

some other elements in here that I do like when it comes to the materials there's this I guess it's a fake leather finish on the dashboard here but it kind of reminds me of like old Volvo leather and I like that and it's also got it's pretty nice material on the seats too with nice stitching including like a I guess it's like a light tan or light brown sort of finish on the stitching. 

They gel so well though with this material here which is kind of like a diamond shaped etched sort of look it's just a very nice feeling material but it doesn't really all combine as well as I thought it might when I first got into this car. so but hey everybody has their own tastes. you might love it and that's totally cool if you do Now when it comes to the controls. My biggest issue with this car and most Mazdas in fact is that you don't have touch screen, Apple carplay and Android auto. 

You do have those but you don't have the ease of use of using the touchscreen but it does work while the car is sitting still. Instead you've got to use this rotary dial. at least there are other Home keys I guess the fast button keys for you to jump between things when you are using carplay and there's a volume dial down here as well which I like now.

one thing that I'm a big fan of in this car is that there are so many buttons. I love buttons I'm a big fan. I think that buttons make it a lot easier to live with a car. So you've got fan control buttons. You've got your controls here for your temperature as well. heated steering wheel, heated seats, that sort of stuff. so you do have a lot of the tactile, easy to touch elements when it comes to the buttons and I like that.

Storage is pretty good, not necessarily amazing, but pretty good. Got a wireless phone charger up here, a couple of cup holders in under this covered section, a jewel opening center console bin it's quite shallow though, so there's not a whole lot of space in there to use. a couple of Usb C ports in there as well. and you've got bottle holders in the doors too. so it's not too bad, but I'm not really sure that it feels like the money that Mazda is asking in my opinion.

All right, how about the back seat Experience Radio If you're expecting a very very roomy second row seat, they're going to be disappointed because this seat is set for me at 182 centimeters or six foot and I am pretty cramped. To be honest, my knees are hard up against the seat in front of me, some of my shins and my feet have got lots of room but it's just not very comfortable there's not enough room back here. I don't think for something that is a midsize Suv, there are small Suvs that have more leg room than this car. So yeah, that might play into your considerations.

 but if you are looking at this and you've got kids, you'll be happy to know that there are isofix points in the window seats. Three top tether points as well. You've also got map pockets on the seat back so you've got directional air vents down here. This spec also gets heated outboard rear seats. Usbc ports down there and there's another PowerPoint down there as well because this is the plug-in hybrid version. Now you've got bottle holders in the doors too. It also has flip down armrests with cup holders and you can also fold down this section if you need to load through skis or something like that. just make sure that you secure them. so Don't go sliding through to the front.

The material quality and comfort is pretty good. Like the seats are pretty cushy and they actually got a fair bit of comfort to them. But hey it's just not as much room as I was expecting.

Under the bonnet

Three different powertrain options as I mentioned. So the entry level version is a 3.3 liter straight six petrol with mild hybrid technology 48 volt mild hybrid. Now the ads and the Billboards that you'll see say that it's an all hybrid Cx-60 range. It's mild hybrid Let's be realistic, but it does have a fair amount of power and torque for a six-cylinder petrol engine. Now the diesel engine is also a straight six. Yeah, so this is what makes this car a little bit different. Straight Six diesel, heaps of power and torque and just like the petrol version, It's all-wheel drive and comes with an 8-speed automatic transmission.

This one here as you can probably see here is the E-sky Active, Fev or Phev or P. Hav whatever you want to call it plug-in hybrid. So it has a 2.5 liter four-cylinder petrol engine and it's also got an electric motor as you would expect, teamed to a battery pack and it has pretty decent combined power and torque outputs as see on your screen now it isn't the most refined engine but I'm going to tell you about that in the driving section.

Range and charging

Let's talk about charging for this plug-in hybrid version. It's Ac charging only there's no Dc fast charging it's type 2 as you would expect that's the Modern Standard essentially and so it has a 17.8 kilowatt hour battery pack. It's a Lithium-Ion battery pack and Mazda reckons that it's good for a pretty decent amount of Ev driving range. You'll see that on screen now and they also reckon that it should be able to recharge from a 7.2 kilowatt wall box in about two and a half hours.

Driving

Okay, so we're about to take off in the Cx60 plug-in hybrid in park right now. Let's go into drive hear that it's kind of an interesting sound it's very mechanical sounding and you might not be expecting that. It's not very refined sounding either and also there's a bit of a lack of refinement at low speeds when for example you're reversing out of a driveway or you are trying to do a reverse parallel park which I'll just do now for illustrative purposes. So back into reverse. The shift is a bit weird too. yeah it's kind of hard to feather the throttle. 

uh when it's in Ev mode and yep there we go we are in. So it does take a little bit of getting used To this Ev driving mode in this plug-in hybrid version. I'll just get back out of this spot a bit clunky bit shuddery it's just not as smooth as some Evs or plug-in hybrids tend to be. You'll also notice that it's not as smooth as it could be in terms of the gear shifts. Yep, you can feel shifts happening in this car which is strange for an Ev. Well, for the Ev mode of a car at least. and that's because the electric motor is integrated into the transmission so it will actually shift up from first to second to Third and so on. So I'll just stop so we can experience it together.

First it's very short third. So the geese are very short and obviously it feels like it's trying to do things as easily as it can. But yeah it takes a bit of getting used to it's not as smooth as you might expect that an Ev mode will be. if you've driven any other Evs and you get into this and go What's? going on here. I can totally understand that at lower speeds you will notice that it does have even sometimes a bit of a shutter and a bit of a sort of feel to it which is a bit strange. 

Um, you know this is a expensive car and it's nowhere near as refined as some of the other plug-in hybrid systems that I've driven in the past. So if you're expecting it to feel luxury, it doesn't. and yep, that was the engine kicking in to help me get away from a standstill. Look I'm on low battery at the moment. so it is using the engine a little bit more. I mean a Mitsubishi Outlander has a smoother and quieter transmission and transition between Ev and petrol driving modes or you know, using both at the same time. So it is really surprising that this is the level that they were going.

Yep, tick job done, Doesn't feel like it's? job done to me. It's just a bit hard to drive smoothly. it sort of feels like it's constantly jerking back and forth. this engine, transmission, battery, electric motor combination. it just isn't. as smooth as it could or should be and that might not matter to you because you might be looking at the petrol or the diesel version of this car. I haven't driven either of them so I can't really comment on what they're like you might have read if you've already done a bit of research on this car.

the suspension is not fantastic it's very very firm and in the plug-in hybrid versions they've got more weight so it can feel like it's pretty bouncy and bumpy and lumpy and I've driven a lot of other luxury cars that have bad rides as well though. so it isn't necessarily on its own there and for a lot of people ride Comfort might not be a big priority, but I think Master could have done better. This just isn't fantastic. I think the steering is a bit unpleasant. 

um it's just really heavy on Center and so it can be a bit hard to judge what's going to happen next. And it is very direct though. So when you do go through some Corners you will find that it does have a pretty agile feel to it. But um, I've just found that when I've been going through corners, the bumpiness of the ride just takes away from it. Doesn't offer good handling, it just makes it less Pleasant. There are also two different regenerative braking modes. I've got it set in the highest mode at the moment and it won't come to a full stop, but it does gradually slow things down for you.

Another thing that's not fantastic is the amount of road noise intrusion that comes into the cabin on a course chip Road. This is really quite loud for the type of car that this is trying to be and the type of competitors that this car is aiming up against.

Hmm, But I know there are people out there who don't really care that much about the drive experience and they'll be happy with the Ev driving capabilities of this plug-in hybrid system. Now let's talk about that in the efficiency section for my test in this plug-in hybrid version of the Cx60.

Efficiency

I did 100 kilometers and then I did another 100 kilometers. So for the first hundred I'd plugged in overnight, I made sure the car was fully charged and I wanted to see how much range I could get from the Ev battery pack situation. So the claim is 76 kilometers. Now that's based on the Adr testing which is much more lenient than Wltp which is usually the standard that most brands refer to.

 So 76 K's grain of salt I would say look, I got uh, more than 50 but not more than 60 K's of Ev driving range out of this full battery and then I let it switch over to well, choosing its own adventure. So it was either choosing battery or petrol driving in a hybrid mode. You could say just to round out that first 100K. So you'll see on screen now the on test fuel consumption figure and energy consumption figure for this drive. When I did the first 100ks and then I did the next 100ks and that has seen a higher figure because it's been relying on the petrol engine quite a lot more, you'll see that on your screen.

Now Now that sort of goes to my argument that the idea of plug-in hybrid claimed efficiency numbers like this ones which is 2.1 liters per 100 K's is a little bit misleading because you'll only ever achieve that for the first 100. If you've got a full battery, then you're going to use a lot more fuel. But if you're going to use this car as it's intended, I mean you're probably going to. if you're going to spend this much extra to get the plug-in hybrid, then yes, you will achieve pretty close to the official claimed figure. If you only ever do 100ks at a time and you make sure that your battery is fully charged up.

What about the other models, You'll see the official combined cycle fuel consumption figure for the six cylinder petrol version of the Cx60 on your screen. Now as you would expect it's a little bit higher still has mild hybrid technology to help it out. so it's lower than maybe a six cylinder petrol turbocharged engine has been in the past. I haven't driven it so I can't attest to whether it will live up to that claim. and then there's the diesel one. The official combined cycle figure for it is lower. Obviously, diesels are typically a lot more fuel efficient. Uh, but you can see on screen now that it is a pretty decent number. It does have 48 volt mild hybrid as well, so it does have some electrification to help things out.

Is it safe?

The Cx-60 has the maximum five-star and Cap safety rating based on 2022 criteria. and it does come as standard with a bunch of really, really good technology and equipment. So when it comes to safety, you've got autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian cyclist and Junction detection there's also a lane keeping assist function there's adaptive cruise control there's blind spot monitoring and re-cross traffic alert front and rear parking sensors and a surround View Camera as standard across all the grades which is nice to see. 

Now you can get the surround View Camera with a see-through function so it makes basically makes the car look like it's transparent on the screen but that will cost you extra if you want that on the entry level version and if you do tick that two thousand dollar option box you also get front cross traffic alert which works just like rear cross traffic but it works at the front of the car.

It's standard on the higher grades plus cruising and traffic control which is basically like a semi-autonomous low-speed cruise control system for traffic jam and a driver monitoring system that can allow you to set up your profile for the car. so it has a camera that keeps an eye on you and makes sure that it's you that's driving and if it is you that's driving it'll adjust things like the seat and the mirrors and that sort of stuff which is pretty neat but also keep an eye on you'll make sure you're not getting too fatigued.

 That can be annoying though when it comes to airbags. well there's a bunch there's eight including dual front front side, full length curtain and a front center and driver's knee airbag when it comes to warranty you've got a five-year unlimited kilometer warranty for the Cx60 and all other Mazdas as well.

Ownership

If you choose the plug-in hybrid version, you get an eight year warranty for the high voltage battery pack. When it comes to servicing, the intervals are 12 months and 15 000 K's for the petrol and plug-in hybrid versions. If you choose the diesel though, it's 12 months and 10 000 kilometers. So if you do a lot of K's it means you're going to be spending more money to maintain your diesel car. Most other diesels have much longer intervals so that's a bit confusing. but you'll see the prices for the petrol version, the plug-in hybrid version, and also the diesel version. When it comes to the average annual service cost for the first five years there's a cap price plan for five years and 75 000 or 5 years and fifty thousand if you buy the diesel there's roadside assist included as well for five years too.

Verdict

the Mazda Cx60 is definitely something that is well different to anything else on the market. I don't necessarily know that I love this car and I'm not sure that you will either. There are a few elements to it that just aren't Well, as good as the price suggests it should be, namely the ride and also the plug-in hybrid powertrain is a bit average. if I'm honest.

Now tell me what you reckon in the comments section below would you choose one of these cars and if you would, which spec would you choose? Would you choose it with diesel, petrol or plug-in hybrid? Or would you choose one of its best Alternatives that I've already mentioned or something else completely?