Ford Bronco Sport vs Mazda CX-50 - Off-Road Crossovers Face Off in Sloppy Winter Weather

Hi folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. We are constantly talking these days about lifestyle vehicles and I have two of the newest ones on the market right here next to me. On my right that is the Ford Bronco Sport and on my left that's the new challenger the Mazda CX-50 and in this video we're going to show you all the details of these two models and decide which one is better. Let's look at the two models we have here today and both of these are the off-road ready models for these two vehicles. So the Mazda here and I am going to say Mazda although for all my Canadians let me address the fact that yes we call it a Mazda here in Canada. In the U.S. you call it a Mazda. I kind of flip-flop between them both but I'm going to try to stick with Mazda for this review. So the CX-50 this is a brand new model but they also already added a new package one model year later that is the Meridian Edition and that's what you're looking at here. Now the big upgrade on Meridian a real set of Falken Wildpeak all-terrain tires. You're also getting that set of 18-inch wheels, the black plastic cladding, a graphic up here on the hood and some unique style which makes this thing look good and then on top of Meridian Edition we also have the Apex package which brings along the roof bars. You get that massive roof rack up there and some mud flaps. So this CX-50 is fully loaded with every single feature you're going to want to go off-road and actually get some work done or maybe have some fun camping. Now over here on the Bronco Sport this is the Badlands which once again is the best off-road version you can buy. Now what makes it so well first of all you also get a set of Falken Wildpeaks but I got to point this out these are Falken Wildpeaks AT3s whereas these are Falken Wildpeak Trails a little more aggressive on the Ford. Not a lot but definitely a little more aggressive over here. Now those are fit to 17-inch wheels as well so you get more sidewall. Now the other thing on the Bronco Sport because you get the Badlands you also get black plastic cladding everywhere, you've got a unique suspension setup and you get a unique twin clutch rear drive unit which is actually going to allow you to imitate a locker. So Ford on sort of the hardcore off-road features has a little bit of an edge but of course today we're really just going to focus on driving around in the wintertime on some wet sloppy roads and we'll be able to tell you which one of these actually handles better with its all-wheel drive system. We have to talk about the overall size here but honestly more just about the overall shape you can see the windshield here on the Mazda is very raked whereas over there on the Bronco Sport it's much more upright and that's the entire kind of cab here on the Mazda everything is raked and kind of stylish. The Ford over there is sort of straight up and boxy and that allows it to maximize interior space because on paper the Mazda is actually bigger. If you're talking about wheel base this is 110 inches right here which is five inches longer than the Bronco Sport and then overall length this CX-50 is over 10 inches longer you can kind of see it here we line them up for you. So yes the Bronco Sport is smaller but I do think it uses its interior space a little bit better but you know what why don't we put that to the test right now I'll go climb in both of them and we'll see how I fit. So key feature in these vehicles is space so let's have a look does Steve fit? So let me climb into the second row here on the Bronco now this is dad's seating position in front of me and on paper this is 36.9 inches of leg room and I don't really have enough knee room I mean I could kind of make it work but it's definitely squishy in here at this point I have to I'm six foot over 300 pounds so I'm a big guy of course now the point I was making outside the vehicle though is look headroom there's a ton of headroom here and again that's just because of the shape of the Bronco Sport so the other thing I'll mention just quickly this luxury package you get these nice leather seats yeah they're actually quite comfortable so I could fit back here if the driver was to move forward and sort of make some more space for me so if it's a smaller driver I'd be okay but the back seat is sort of just so-so now let's go climb in the CX-50 so now let's climb into the CX-50 and I can already tell you it's harder to get into because I got to get my head so much lower because this door is so low because of the rake now sadly headroom is an issue here I don't have enough of it I'm right here we do have the panoramic sunroof so I could kind of sit up into the sunroof but that's not comfortable so for somebody who's taller the rake in this roof is significant although you might have noticed I actually have a little bit more leg room in this vehicle it's funny how these things work this is just under 40 inches of rear seat leg room so you have more space right here but less space up above you for head and shoulder room so really this back seat comes down to well what size are you are you a tall person big torso short legs it's going to depend what size you are as to whether or not you're going to fit well back here but overall the seat is fairly comfortable and I do have a heated seat as well which I appreciate in the back now let's look at what you can fit in the back so first of all here on our CX-50 we do have a powered hatch and once again on paper this is actually about two cubic feet more than the Bronco Sport and that's just thanks to how long this floor is and this is a significantly sized cargo space you could fit quite a bit in here I will show you there's a bit of underfloor storage and underneath these extra floor mats there is a spare tire it's not a full size it's just a temporary use but still nice to have a spare tire down there and now we can take a look at the Bronco over here and first of all it has a party trick the Mazda doesn't the glass opens by itself a lot of people really love that feature I always hear from dog owners so now let's open the whole hatch that is not powered that's just old school and yeah I mean just by eyeballing it you can tell this is a little bit shorter than the Mazda's cargo area is underneath this big rubber floor mat though let's take a look at what we got is that a full sizer so that's actually a full size spare tire unlike over there that was the temporary use so that's definitely something to note and then the other thing and I already got a shot of it there's this really cool kind of storage deck lid which slides to two different positions so you can use it totally tucked away you can put stuff on top of it or you can move it back you can see it here and use it as a little tailgate kind of table so Ford is definitely more along the lines of hey you're going on an adventure let us do something to help you with that and the other thing that shows that there's also a plug back here 400 watts and a 12 volt so you have power at the back of the Bronco okay folks time to start driving these things now the first thing I like to do is come out here onto a snow covered road and see how the all-wheel drive acts when you just put your foot to the floor so I'm here in the CX-50 and this thing only has three drive modes the Ford has a lot more so right now I'm just in normal mode I'm going to floor it and we'll see what happens and then we'll try again in off-road mode here we go all right well pretty uneventful and the key thing there was traction control the power started to come on traction control very quickly cut the power which allows the wheel to wheels to gain traction again and then I took off um yeah uneventful that's exactly what you want when you are doing something like that when you're taking off in the snow this kind of simulates let's say it's an emergency response to something suddenly you need to really hit it and you don't want your vehicle to get all squirrelly and you don't want to have to be compensating for what the powertrain is doing and I didn't have to at all so we'll do one more take off in off-road mode just to see how it acts differently than in normal here we go oh interesting so I'm never sure what exactly it's going to do but in this case off-road mode actually allowed the wheels to spin I didn't have traction control right away jump in to say hey you shouldn't be doing that and that is an interesting difference I was curious about this because I wanted to know hey should I recommend that you drive in off-road mode even just on a snowy day and now I know the answer is no normal mode did a better job of keeping the vehicle calm and in control than off-road mode did and that is because if you're truly off-road stuck in a huge snowbank or in the mud sometimes you want the wheels to be spinning as fast as they can and that's what it allowed it to do so I like that it's a real off-road mode but for snowy driving you want to just leave it in normal because the all-wheel drive system does a nice job now let's jump in the Bronco Sport and see the difference all right time to repeat the same test here in the Bronco Sport although the Bronco Sport has a lot more drive modes here we have normal eco sport slippery mud and ruts sand and rock crawl so you got a lot of choices we're going to do it in two modes like the CX-50 we're going to start in normal and then we'll try it in slippery okay so here we go normal mode in drive going to go foot to the floor let's see what the all-wheel drive does all right well basically the same response as the Mazda traction control instantly kicked in cut the power and then slowly rolled it back on the only slight difference that I felt is that the Ford Bronco Sport felt like it was a little more rear wheel drive bias I actually felt the back end start to step out really quickly before traction control caught whereas the Mazda definitely felt like more of the power was going to the front wheels and in this case yeah you actually kind of want it to be front wheel drive bias but overall that was also a pretty calm and controlled takeoff okay now we're in slippery mode gonna floor it let's see what happens that's funny honestly I didn't feel a massive difference between slippery and normal I think in slippery the power is maybe distributed a little bit better so I didn't feel like it wanted to step out in the rear end but identical engine response the traction control kicked in and then slowly rolls on the power overall if I had to pick one of the two systems man it is hard they're very similar they both did exactly what I wanted them to do and now here we are driving in this CX-50 the first thing I just want to talk about quickly is why this CX-50 even exists and it's because Mazda has latched on to this outdoor off-road kind of trend more people than ever they own kayaks and bikes and they like to go hiking and camping and there's actually data to back that up that especially since the pandemic those things have gotten more popular so a brand like Mazda they had to pivot and say you know what let's build a vehicle to suit those needs and that's why the CX-50 exists I mean is it that different from a CX-5 no it is not what it does do though it has more wheelbase which means it can tow more 3,500 pounds and it has a little bit more ground clearance so it's going to be better off-road so you know what dad I think it was smart of Mazda to go this way to make sure they were cashing in on this trend and then what I truly appreciate is this meridian edition that came out with a year later it adds those all-terrain tires we both know the most significant upgrade you can make to an off-road vehicle or a vehicle that's doing anything called off-roading is tires so why not do it right from the factory I appreciate that we get those here and now you know all that is to say now let's talk about how it actually drives and you're behind the wheel so you got any thoughts about how the CX-50 is handling out here Mazdas in general are always very mechanically they're tight and you know the responsiveness of this engine the competency behind the wheel I mean everything about it is nice so in other words it reminds me of every Mazda vehicle that I've ever driven you can always tell that someone cares about driving when you drive a Mazda the person who engineered it they want it to feel fun and they don't care what it is like you said a big crossover CX-9 right down to an MX-5 they're all kind of fun yeah so to me this whole you know off-roading package is is more of an afterthought for Mazda it's it's that thing that says everybody else has got one we got to have one too that's not to say that it doesn't work however it's it's no doubt uh flavor of the month and as such you're still getting a Mazda product um and you get a few little things here I really it kind of annoys me to call it an off-roader I'll tell you that that's fair I'll call it a rough roader I certainly wouldn't call it an off-roader because what what doesn't change is your approach and departure angles um and that's what's going to kill you but actually I think you hit the nail on the head we need to say it again which is it tows more and you know we also do a lot of work in the RV industry and that is something that is booming and the whole you know pandemic brought in a whole new younger demographic into RVing and they're sticking around so they're buying these little uh trailers and you know what this is a an excellent vehicle for towing a lot of those yeah and that's where you know a 2000 pound or a 2200 pound tow rating like we have in the Bronco Sport well that could actually make a difference going 22 to 3500 there's actually a big separator there in terms of what type of trailer you'll get and then you know what dad the last point I want to make is sort of what you were getting at as well which is that Mazda is sort of new to this sort of off-road adventure game and they're coming at it from kind of a luxury standpoint it's already been a number of years where Mazda came out publicly and said look we're going to pivot to become more of a premium brand and everything in here suggests that the leather the stitching everything in here feels more luxurious than it does over there in the Bronco Sport so Mazda's coming at this from the area if we build a luxury product let's make it a little more rough and tumble Ford on the other hand well they're not calling that thing a luxury vehicle and they're not even pretending it is but they come at it from a more practical and in my opinion fun standpoint so why don't we go jump in the Bronco Sport now and we'll uh talk about how that thing is yeah fair enough and now here we are in the Ford Bronco Sport and I gotta tell you dad the thing I notice immediately is we have more room we're not touching we got more shoulder room and again this all comes down to the way these vehicles are shaped because on paper the CX-50 is bigger if you were just to look at the wheelbase and the length you'd say oh that thing's bigger but in practice the way this Bronco Sport is put together it feels roomier inside straight up and this is from two big dudes so we know what we're talking about it doesn't feel like it's bigger it is actually bigger I mean it's the shape of this cabin Mazda works on what I call the the jellybean uh design it's true you know everything is is rounded and contoured and and it's very attractive and what they you know like to call themselves a a driver's vehicle whereas this is typically utility based Ford design this vehicle is all about getting the job done whatever that job is I mean never mind the amount of space but it's also our seating height you feel how much taller you're sitting you definitely do I mean the glass is dragged lower you got a flatter hood so even if we don't have any much more uh clearance on this vehicle you feel like you have more clearance you definitely do and you'd actually do on paper this thing does have more ground clearance better approach better departure so all of those kind of serious off-road things the Bronco Sport is a hair better now one of the interesting things I think is that these are both turbocharged inline four-cylinder engines but the Ford Bronco Sport makes more horsepower but the Mazda makes more torque so you know what let's put my foot into it that's pretty good it gets up and goes this Bronco Sport I wouldn't complain about that power however I do think the Mazda hits a little bit harder off the line overall not a huge difference yeah and honestly that's one of the things when you if you're cross shopping these two um you're going to end up buying that Mazda because you like the way it looks um if you buy the Ford you're going to buy this because you're in it and you recognize all the things that it'll do for you yeah that's my takeaway so yeah dad I think that's what it comes down to you said it the styling which one you think ultimately looks better and then you know if you want to save a couple of bucks you go for the Mazda but if you want the vehicle that has better utility more usability you go for the Bronco Sport and I also get the feeling here I said this earlier this just feels a little more fun it has more of a fun loving attitude the Mazda feels more serious yeah there's no doubt about it and the fun part the best part about owning a Bronco Sport is that you really you stop saying sport the day that you get it and when people say what do you have you go I got a Bronco and you just you just you just kind of leave that lay it out there yeah you get to blend it actually what cracks me up is when you turn on the adaptive cruise control the little icon comes up to show you there's a vehicle in front of you and it's a full-size two-door Bronco so even down here in the info screen they're trying to trick you but yes I think Ford was brilliant with that marketing calling this a Bronco because you get to be part of the club exactly well folks we have come to the end of this video now I do have to say if you do have an active lifestyle like I was mentioning if you like to kayak canoe bike or camp both of these are good options here with the CX-50 you're getting a little crossover that handles nicely and it looks sharp but right now I have to tell you if I was laying down my money it would be on this Ford Bronco Sport for me I really appreciate the more utilitarian nature of this Bronco and the fact that everything here is meant to be utilized actually out there in the world plus honestly I just fit better in here but now of course I need to hear from you so please go below into the comments let me know which one of these two crossovers you would buy and then as always don't forget to hit like, hit subscribe, hit join to become a member and then come right back here to Truck King to see which vehicles we're testing next. See ya!