Mazda has just rolled out its CX-9 replacement and in the top specification it'll have a price tag of just under $100,000. Is it worth it? Paul Maric finds out by test driving the 2024 Mazda CX-90 SUV!
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Mazda content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mazda
More Mazda CX-90 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mazda/cx-90
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 01:08
Interior: 03:46
Infotainment: 05:16
Safety Tech: 05:58
Practicality: 06:35
Boot Space: 07:34
On the Road: 08:36
Verdict: 15:32
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#mazda #cx90 #review
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Mazda content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mazda
More Mazda CX-90 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mazda/cx-90
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 01:08
Interior: 03:46
Infotainment: 05:16
Safety Tech: 05:58
Practicality: 06:35
Boot Space: 07:34
On the Road: 08:36
Verdict: 15:32
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#mazda #cx90 #review
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So Mazda is a company that is constantly surprising us with the direction
00:04 it's heading in with things. And what I mean by that is this is the CX-90. It debuts a
00:09 new six-cylinder engine, which we didn't think we'd see from Mazda, especially when the whole
00:12 world is going down. Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric. So CX-90 is kind of a replacement
00:18 for the CX-9. It is a bigger version of that, and I'll go through the spec shortly. It is
00:23 actually a really big car. This right here is a left-hand drive pre-production car. So
00:27 today I'm going to give you a little bit of detail before we actually get the car properly
00:31 to drive on Australian roads. So this is just a quick sampler of it. We do know pricing
00:35 though. This is the top spec version. This is the six-cylinder petrol. This is priced
00:39 at just under $100,000, which is a big step up in price. But if that's too expensive,
00:44 the entire range kicks off at just under 75 grand. This competes with things like this
00:48 and Pathfinder, Hyundai Palisade, and even things like the Volvo XC90 as well. So if
00:53 you do want to jump ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes on
00:57 the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. If
01:00 you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you
01:03 can find out every single time we drive a big old Mazda.
01:08 So let's talk exterior design. You've got eight colours to pick from, and the premium
01:12 colours are only around $600, so they're not outrageously expensive. On a BMW, you're paying
01:16 like $2,000 if you don't want the standard solid colour. So it is impressive to see you
01:21 can get a really wide range of colours here for CX-90. This thing is big. It's around
01:26 5.1 metres in size. It's only marginally shorter than an X7. We reviewed the X7 recently,
01:31 and that is, it's a big car in person, whereas this doesn't feel big, and I think that's
01:35 important because Mazda wants to kind of maintain those proportions they have with the rest
01:39 of their range. On the design front, you've got a big grille there. Behind that grille,
01:43 you've got active vanes that open and close depending on the engine's cooling requirements.
01:47 This is an inline six-cylinder engine, so when we go for a drive, running through just
01:51 some of the interesting engineering bits, but because it's an inline six, you actually
01:55 have a lot of room on either side of it for your ancillaries, and that's where they've
01:58 been able to pick up some of the handling gains here with this being a rear-wheel drive
02:02 platform. Cooling down the bottom there as well, chrome highlights around here, daytime
02:07 running light there as well, big radar sensor there with a camera for the 360 camera. Up
02:12 over here, you have a set of full LED headlights. Again, this is a US-spec car, so it might
02:16 look slightly different when we get the Australian version. Little vents in there as well. Whiff
02:21 round to the wheels. So, you can go up to 21 inches in size for the wheels, so this
02:25 is the 21, and I quite like the look of this. So, machined finish on the outside, piano
02:29 black on the inside there as well. It's a big tyre as well, 275 wide on the front and
02:34 the rear. This isn't really an off-road-focused vehicle, but you can see here they have a
02:38 bit of wheel arch cladding there, and then up here it says inline six because it is a
02:43 six-cylinder petrol in this spec. You can also get a six-cylinder diesel as well. In
02:47 terms of your wing mirror, indicator is built into there. You have camera under there as
02:52 well. Chrome highlight down the side of the car there with privacy glass here, and roof
02:56 rails. And then come around to the back with me.
02:58 So, now, the rear. Have a look at this. I actually quite like this design. Again, like
03:02 I mentioned before, it's big but it doesn't feel big. So, I'm sort of taller than the
03:06 car here, but it still has those big proportions. So, full LED taillights there. They look quite
03:12 nice and they flash a bit like the Mazda 3 does with that pulsing element in there. E-Sky
03:17 Active G because this actually uses a 48-volt mild hybrid system. So, when we go for a driver
03:22 run you through what that means in terms of the driving performance. More of that chrome
03:26 highlight down the bottom there as well. This is available in Australia with either six
03:30 or seven seats depending on the spec that you go for. This one here that we're testing
03:34 is the six-seat setup. So, we'll have a look at that in just a sec.
03:37 Now, let me know what you reckon about the design of the CX-90. Do you think it looks
03:40 good? Let me know in the comments section below. Would you buy this for this kind of
03:43 price or is it too expensive? Let me know down there.
03:46 OK, so we're in the CX-90. We'll start off with the key. So, you've got lock, unlock,
03:52 boot and then I don't know what this is. It must be like a panic button or something. I
03:56 haven't seen this on a Mazda key in Australia before. Mazda logo on the back. It's a proximity
04:00 sensing key. So, you can leave that in your pocket and you have a push button to start
04:03 once you're ready to roll.
04:04 Now, this is what will be the top spec in Australia. It'll be called the Azami in Australia
04:09 and this has an optional package as well by the look of it. This spec probably won't match
04:14 up exactly what we're getting in Australia but I'll run you through what I see here on
04:18 this pre-production car anyway.
04:21 This looks unreal. So, part of the problem is Mazda's going premium, which is fair enough.
04:25 Their cars are nice. They want to charge a bit more for them. It makes perfect sense.
04:29 Problem when you do that is you have to have an interior to match. They've got a vehicle
04:33 here that's the right size for that price tag but I also feel like they've got a vehicle
04:37 here that looks well and surely premium enough for that price tag too.
04:41 The steering wheel may look familiar because if you've seen our review of the Bentley Bentayga,
04:46 it has a similar setup there on the steering wheel where you have the multi-coloured leather
04:50 setup. So, I can see they're drawing inspiration from luxury brands. You've got this Alcantara
04:54 style material along the dashboard there. It is just a really beautifully presented
04:59 interior. And I think if I was dropping a hundred grand on this, it would actually make
05:03 me feel good about that kind of investment. So, from a sort of look standpoint, it's great.
05:08 I'm not going to run our durometer or build quality test over any of this. We'll do that
05:11 once we do actually get the car to drive ourselves. Today is all going to be just about high-level
05:16 details.
05:17 Now, let's talk infotainment. So, again, spending the money, the top spec comes with a big infotainment
05:23 screen. So, it's over 12 inches in size. Nice and high resolution. No touchscreen, unfortunately.
05:28 It's all driven here by this controller central to the car. I'm going to run through this
05:32 in a whole lot more detail when we do get the car to drive, because some of these functions
05:36 won't work here in Australia. But it will come with things like AM/FM/DAB digital radio,
05:41 also a Bose-branded sound system.
05:44 Head of the driver is another large 12.3-inch display. This thing is really high resolution.
05:48 I was having a play with it before, and it looks fantastic. You can flick through different
05:52 menus on there to configure things on the right-hand side, but it is a pretty straightforward
05:56 setup and a big head-up display there as well.
05:59 Moving on to safety technology, this will come with the whole kit caboodle when it comes
06:03 to safety. Again, this is not representative of what we're going to get in Australia, but
06:07 we'll have things like autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection,
06:11 auto-dimming rear vision mirror, a lane departure warning system, lane-keeping assistant, and
06:15 also a semi-autonomous steering function as well.
06:19 Front and rear parking sensors, and also a 360 camera. I'll show you what that looks
06:22 like. That quality is actually really good, so you can quite clearly see what's going
06:26 on down the front of the car. They're also down the sides too, and then you can change
06:30 angles as well as you go. So that's actually not a bad setup there at all.
06:34 In terms of the rest of the functions, I'll just quickly touch on these. You've got dual-zone
06:38 automatic climate control up the front here with heated and cooled seats, heated steering
06:42 wheel as well. Steering wheel offers both tilt and reach adjustment. Driver and front
06:48 passenger seat are electrically adjustable too, so you can go forwards, backwards. Your
06:52 backrest can go forwards, backwards. You can lift the back of it, the front of it, and
06:55 also lumbar adjust as well.
06:58 And then on connectivity, there's stacks of connectivity around the cabin here, including
07:01 wireless smartphone charging. Second row, like I mentioned before, you can get this
07:05 either in six or seven seats. This particular pre-production car is a six-seater. There's
07:09 actually a heap of room back there, and you can slide the second row forwards and backwards
07:13 if you do need more space. You've also got manual blinds that you can pull up and down
07:17 as well.
07:18 The third row is mainly a kid's zone, but when we do get this car in Australia, because
07:23 we are short of time today, I am keen to see exactly what it's like for an adult to fit
07:27 back there, so we'll see how that goes. But outside of that, it is really nicely presented
07:30 in here, and I think that it does feel befitting of its price tag.
07:34 So let's talk cargo space. Being an enormous vehicle, you'd expect it to have a fair bit.
07:38 So power tailgate here, it's not very high at all. So, yeah, even with that pushed open,
07:45 I'm still having to duck down to get under that, but it seems to be the story with a
07:49 lot of Japanese cars.
07:50 In terms of cargo space, you have a little under 500 litres here when the third row is
07:54 in place. Beneath the cargo floor, you have a little bit of extra storage with a space
07:59 saver spare located under there.
08:01 Over here, we've got an AC outlet, so obviously for Australia, this will be 230 volts. You've
08:07 also got a 12-volt outlet off to the side there as well.
08:09 Can expand the space by dropping your third row. That opens up the space to just over
08:15 1,100 litres. And then if you do want even more space, you can drop the second row as
08:20 well.
08:21 Now that increases the space to a little over 2,100 litres.
08:25 Only sort of issue I have with all of this is there's no electronic way to drop the seats.
08:29 It's all manual, and for $100,000, I would have thought there'd be a button that does
08:33 all of that. So, yeah, hopefully that's something they can integrate over time.
08:37 OK, so we've just hit the road in the CX-90. Now I know this is a little bit confusing.
08:42 Mazda is holding the Australian Drive for this at the same place that we filmed the
08:45 rest of our car reviews, but we have significantly less time with the car, so this won't be anywhere
08:50 near as detailed as what we normally do. But I'll run you through as much detail as I possibly
08:53 can.
08:54 Now it is worth calling out as well, we haven't been able to shoot our own B-roll, which is
08:58 the footage that gets shown to you while I'm talking. So unfortunately, the B-roll they
09:02 shot is very wet and probably not consistent with what I'm saying, but you'll have to kind
09:07 of use your imagination to get a feel for it.
09:09 Now this engine's interesting because Mazda, like I said, has launched a suite of six-cylinder
09:14 engines. This one here is the petrol. It's a 3.3-litre turbocharged inline-six, so it's
09:20 quite reminiscent of some of the engines they used to run in the old Ford cars. So they
09:24 were an inline-six, a four-litre, so it kind of has that vibe to it, and that's what I
09:27 love about it because it has a unique sonorous note, and it really just suits the characteristic
09:33 of a sporty car that just wants to go fast with a really good punchy middle band.
09:38 Now this produces a pretty impressive 254 kilowatts of power and 500 newton-metres of
09:44 torque, so there's some pretty healthy numbers there. And in terms of the transmission, they're
09:48 using an eight-speed automatic. Now this isn't a torque converter, it's an in-house transmission
09:54 with a wet clutch that Mazda has developed, and that means that it's different to the
09:59 transmission they run in some of their other vehicles. And look, to be honest, it's actually
10:02 not bad. From behind the wheel here, if I nail the throttle there, it is a little bit
10:07 lazy there, but if you do have it in Sport mode, it actually is ready to respond much
10:12 quicker. So in Sport mode it's going to hold the gear, and then when I kick down, it gets
10:17 up and starts moving a whole lot quicker there as well. So a little bit lazy, but it does
10:22 get moving. In terms of the engine itself, it is really responsive. When you do get stuck
10:26 into the throttle, it pins you back in the seat and you get that really beautiful feeling
10:31 as it builds up the torque there and really just sort of mashes you in the back.
10:36 Now Mazda claims a combined fuel economy of 8.2 litres per 100km. I'm a little dubious
10:42 of that claim because an inline-six turbo is rarely ever going to achieve that kind
10:48 of economy, and granted here on the Proving Ground this car has only ever been driven
10:53 here because it's left-hand drive, it can't be driven on the road. It is consuming significantly
10:57 more than that, so we will reserve judgement until we actually get the car in Australia
11:01 to see how it does perform in Australian conditions and what the economy is actually like. The
11:05 diesel version of this is expected to use just over 5 litres per 100km, which is an
11:11 unreal comparison, especially if the figure is true.
11:13 OK, let's have a look at our sine waves over here. We'll jack the speed up a little bit
11:18 and see how this feels. We normally attack these at 130, we're speed restricted today
11:24 to 120. OK, we'll see what this ride feels like. That is fantastic. Yeah, nice. So look,
11:31 driven as a US-spec vehicle, it is performing incredibly well here. Normally with the US-spec
11:37 vehicles they're very soft, whereas this is soft but really nicely controlled with some
11:42 excellent body control there. Now I want to explain to you how they've set up this chassis.
11:47 So this is a rear-wheel drive platform, which means you've got an engine up the front and
11:51 a driveshaft that goes to the back of the car. So it is predominantly rear-wheel driven,
11:55 and when you design a rear-wheel drive platform, you are designing it so that you have those
12:00 inherent performance characteristics. This only engages the front axle when it detects
12:04 slip or when you are towing or in off-road mode, it really sort of caters for those conditions.
12:09 It actually has a locker clutch that can go all the way through to fully locked, which
12:13 then delivers 50% of torque to the front and 50% of torque to the rear axle, and it can
12:18 vary stages of locking in between. So you can get into scenarios where you are gradually
12:23 locking it to give you better traction and control as you push it through a corner.
12:27 Now let's talk drive mode. So I'm going to slot it into Sport, go for a little fang around
12:31 our track here, see what this feels like. It's a bit weird being in a left-hand drive
12:35 car here because typically we're in a right-hand drive car. Yeah, nice. This actually feels
12:43 really good. So it has got a degree of body roll there, but it feels very much in control
12:50 and it's communicating really nicely with me. Steering is very communicative too. It's
12:56 actually bloody quick. We are moving here. Get on the brakes there. Brakes feel nice
13:02 and confidence-inspiring too. That Sport mode's awesome. It's really holding the gears nicely.
13:06 I don't have a camera on the Speedo today, but I'm getting some really good feedback
13:11 through the whole package there. It's actually surprising how well it's handling for such
13:19 a big car. That is unreal. Okay, we're going to roll onto our back straight here. Wow. This
13:29 is really hauling along nicely. Very nice. I'm not damn impressed with this. Yeah, so
13:37 just on that Sport mode there with the rear-wheel drive platform, this does feel very rear-wheel
13:43 drive oriented. So when you do get into the throttle out of corners, you can feel it sending
13:48 that torque to the rear and you're really getting it tucking in nicely. The front wheels
13:52 feel very much like an assistant to get it around that corner. So yeah, look, certainly
13:57 from a performance point of view, I'll be keen to have this back-to-back with some of
14:02 the German competitors because I remember driving the Q7 here, the six-cylinder version
14:07 at pace, and that thing felt pretty impressive. This really doesn't feel too far off it. So
14:11 yeah, I'm quite impressed with what they've done here. Yeah, look, the other thing worth
14:15 touching on now as well as the ride, I mentioned before on the sine waves that it is sort of
14:19 pretty nice and smooth. On our bumpier sections of road here, it does feel very nice and comfortable
14:25 as well. It doesn't feel sort of too soft or too hard. It really is a nice sort of middle
14:30 ground in between there. So I think they've done a good job with that. On the noise, it
14:34 is pretty quiet inside the cabin here. I really don't hear much and I'm keen to attack our
14:38 noise right with the sound meter when we do get this back to see how it actually performs.
14:42 OK, let's swap this back into normal mode. Now this uses a 48-volt mild hybrid system.
14:49 Now it's a fascinating setup because it actually allows the car to switch off at speed. So
14:54 right now we're doing 40 k's an hour, the car is entirely off, I'm off the brake, touch
14:58 the throttle, comes back on as well. So the 48-volt system allows it to switch off at
15:03 speed to preserve the electronic systems, which inevitably saves fuel. In addition to
15:07 that it has an 11 kilowatt generator, so that's how much energy it can capture, and that all
15:12 can then output at 12.4 kilowatts. So that is enough to run a lot of the systems around
15:17 the car while it is switched off and the driver really doesn't notice anything. It's a very
15:21 seamless stop-start system as well, so when you do come to a stop and roll out of that
15:25 and it fires up again, you really just don't notice anything. So it is a pretty sort of
15:30 impressive feeling behind the wheel.
15:35 So the Mazda CX-90, look, I'm seriously impressed by this. I think that engine is fantastic
15:41 and it's a big departure from what Mazda offers at the moment. It's a big step up from a four-cylinder,
15:45 it has plenty of confidence and plenty of punch. Not sold on the fuel economy just yet,
15:49 obviously this is a pre-production car, we haven't been able to drive it anywhere but
15:52 the Proving Ground because it is a left-hand drive car, but hopefully Mazda will be able
15:56 to meet the claims they have, because they are very ambitious for the diesel and the
15:59 petrol as well. But keen to drive this when it does finally arrive in Australia. If you
16:03 do have any questions, let me know in the comments section below, I'll answer as much
16:07 as I possibly can before we finally get a proper version of this to test on Australia's
16:11 roads. Let me know what you think about this as well. If you did enjoy this video, please
16:15 make sure you like it and you share it with your mates. And if you haven't done so already,
16:18 subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.