2024 Mazda CX-90 turbo review: Would you pay $100k for this SUV?

G'day, I'm Paul. So Mazda is a company that is constantly surprising us with the direction it's heading in with things, and what I mean by that is this is the CX-90. It debuts a new six-cylinder engine, which we didn't think we'd see from Mazda, especially when the whole world is going down. Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electrics. So CX-90 is kind of a replacement for the CX-9. It is a bigger version of that, and I'll go through the spec shortly. It is actually a really big car. This right here is a left-hand drive pre-production car, so today I'm going to give you a little bit of detail before we actually get the car properly to drive on Australian roads. So this is just a quick sampler of it. We do know pricing though. This is the top spec version. This is the six-cylinder petrol. This is priced at just under $100,000, which is a big step up in price, but if that's too expensive, the entire range kicks off at just under $75,000. This competes with things like this and Pathfinder, the Hyundai Palisade, and even things like the Volvo XC90 as well. So if you do want to jump ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we drive a big old Mazda. So let's talk exterior design. You've got eight colours to pick from, and the premium colours are only around $600, so they're not outrageously expensive. On a BMW, you're paying like $2,000 if you don't want the standard solid colour. So it is impressive to see you can get a really wide range of colours here for CX-90. This thing is big. It's around 5.1 metres in size. It's only marginally shorter than an X7. We reviewed the X7 recently, and that is, it's a big car in person, whereas this doesn't feel big, and I think that's important because Mazda wants to kind of maintain those proportions they have with the rest of their range. On the design front, you've got a big grille there. Behind that grille, you've got active vanes that open and close depending on the engine's cooling requirements. This is an inline six-cylinder engine, so when we go for a drive, running through just some of the interesting engineering bits, but because it's an inline six, you actually have a lot of room on either side of it for your ancillaries, and that's where they've been able to pick up some of the handling gains here with this being a rear-wheel drive platform. Cooling down the bottom there as well, chrome highlights around here, daytime running light there as well, big radar sensor there with a camera for the 360 camera. Up over here, you have a set of full LED headlights. Again, this is a US-spec car, so it might look slightly different when we get the Australian version. A little vent in there as well. Whiff around to the wheels. So, you can go up to 21 inches in size for the wheels, so this is the 21, and I quite like the look of this. So, machined finish on the outside, piano black on the inside there as well. It's a big tyre as well, 275 wide on the front and the rear. This isn't really an off-road-focused vehicle, but you can see here they have a bit of wheel arch cladding there, and then up here it says inline six because it is a six-cylinder petrol in this spec. You can also get a six-cylinder diesel as well. In terms of your wing mirror, indicator is built into there. You have camera under there as well. Chrome highlight down the side of the car there with privacy glass here and roof rails, and then come around to the back with me. So, now, the rear. Have a look at this. I actually quite like this design. Again, like I mentioned before, it's big, but it doesn't feel big. So, I'm sort of taller than the car here, but it still has those big proportions. So, full LED taillights there. They look quite nice, and they flash a bit like the Mazda 3 does with that pulsing element in there. eSkyactiv-G because this actually uses a 48-volt mild hybrid system. So, when we go for a drive around you through what that means in terms of the driving performance, more of that chrome highlight down the bottom there as well. This is available in Australia with either six or seven seats depending on the spec that you go for. This one here that we're testing is the six-seat setup. So, we'll have a look at that in just a sec. Now, let me know what you reckon about the design of the CX-90. Do you think it looks good? Let me know in the comments section below. Would you buy this for this kind of price, or is it too expensive? Let me know down there. Okay, so we're in the CX-90. We'll start off with the key. So, you've got lock, unlock, boot, and then I don't know what this is. It must be like a panic button or something. I haven't seen this on a Mazda key in Australia before. Mazda logo on the back. It's a proximity sensing key. So, you can leave that in your pocket. You have a push button start once you're ready to roll. Now, this is what will be the top spec in Australia. It'll be called the Azami in Australia, and this has an optional package as well by the look of it. This spec probably won't match up exactly what we're getting in Australia, but I'll run you through what I see here on this pre-production car anyway. This looks unreal. So, part of the problem is Mazda's going premium, which is fair enough. Their cars are nice. They want to charge a bit more for them. It makes perfect sense. Problem when you do that is you have to have an interior to match. They've got a vehicle here that's the right size for that price tag, but I also feel like they've a vehicle here that looks well and surely premium enough for that price tag too. The steering wheel may look familiar because if you've seen our review of the Bentley Bentayga, it has a similar setup there on the steering wheel where you have the multicoloured leather setup. So, I can see they're drawing inspiration from luxury brands. You've got this Alcantara style material along the dashboard there. It is just a really beautifully presented interior, and I think if I was dropping $100,000 on this, it would actually make me feel good about that kind of investment. So, from a sort of look standpoint, it's great. I'm not going to run our durometer or build quality test over any of this. We'll do that once we do actually get the car to drive ourselves. Today is all going to be just about high-level details. Now, let's talk infotainment. So, again, spending the money, the top spec comes with a big infotainment screen, so it's over 12 inches in size. Nice and high resolution. No touchscreen, unfortunately. It's all driven here by this controller central to the car. I'm going to run through this in a whole lot more detail when we do get the car to drive because some of these functions won't work here in Australia, but it will come with things like AM, FM, DAB, digital radio, also a Bose-branded sound system. Head of the driver is another large 12.3-inch display. This thing is really high resolution. I was having a play with it before, and it looks fantastic. You can flick through different menus on there to configure things on the right-hand side, but it is a pretty straightforward setup, and then a big head-up display there as well. Moving on to safety technology, this will come with the whole kit caboodle when it comes to safety. Again, this is not representative of what we're going to get in Australia, but we'll have things like autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, auto-dimming rear vision mirror, a lane departure warning system, lane-keeping assistant, and also a semi-autonomous steering function as well. Front and rear parking sensors and also a 360 camera. I'll show you what that looks like. That quality is actually really good, so you can quite clearly see what's going on down the front of the car. They're also down the sides too, and then you can change angles as well as you go, so that's actually not a bad setup there at all. In terms of the rest of the functions, I'll just quickly touch on these. You've got dual-zone automatic climate control up the front here with heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel as well. Steering wheel offers both tilt and reach adjustment. Driver and front passenger seat are electrically adjustable too, so you can go forwards, backwards. Your backrest can go forwards, backwards. You can lift back of it, the front of it, and also lumbar adjust as well. And then on connectivity, there's stacks of connectivity around the cabin here, including wireless smartphone charging. Second row, like I mentioned before, you can get this either in six or seven seats. This particular pre-production car is a six-seater. There's actually a heap of room back there, and you can slide the second row forwards and backwards if you do need more space. You've also got manual blinds that you can pull up and down as well. Third row is mainly a kid's zone, but when we do get this car in because we are short of time today, I am keen to see exactly what it's like for an adult to fit back there. So we'll see how that goes. But outside of that, it is really nicely presented in here, and I think that it does feel befitting of its price tag. So let's talk cargo space. Being an enormous vehicle, you'd expect it to have a fair bit. So power tailgate here, it's not very high at all. So yeah, even with that pushed open, I'm still having to duck down to get under that. But so you see the story with a lot of Japanese cars. In terms of cargo space, you have a little under 500 litres here when the third row is in place. Beneath the cargo floor, you have a little bit of extra storage with a space saver spare located under there. Over here, we've got an AC outlet. So obviously for Australia, this will be 230 volts. You've also got a 12-volt outlet off to the side there as well. Can expand the space by dropping your third row. That opens up the space to just over 1100 litres. And then if you do want even more space, you can drop the second row as well. Now that increases the space to a little over 2100 litres. Only sort of issue I have with all of this is there's no electronic way to drop the seats. It's all manual. And for $100,000, I would have thought there'd be a button that does all of that. So yeah, hopefully that's something they can integrate over time. Okay, so we've just hit the road in the CX-90. Now I know this is a little bit confusing. Mazda is holding the Australian drive for this at the same place that we filmed the rest of our car reviews, but we have significantly less time with the car. So this won't be anywhere near as detailed as what we normally do, but I'll run you through as much detail as I possibly can. Now it is worth calling out as well, we haven't been able to shoot our own B-roll, which is the footage that gets shown to you while I'm talking. So unfortunately the B-roll they shot is very wet and probably not consistent with what I'm saying, but you'll have to kind of use your imagination to get a feel for it. Now this engine's interesting because Mazda, like I said, has launched a suite of six-cylinder engines. This one here is the So it's quite reminiscent of some of the engines they used to run in the old Ford cars. So they were an inline six, a four litre, so it kind of has that vibe to it. And that's what I love about it because it has a unique sonorous note and it really just suits the characteristic of a sporty car that just wants to go fast with a really good punchy middle band. Now this produces a pretty impressive 254 kilowatts of power and 500 newton meters of torque. So there's some pretty healthy numbers there. And in terms of the transmission, they're using an eight-speed automatic. Now this isn't a torque converter, it's an in-house transmission with a wet clutch that Mazda has developed. And that means that it's different to the transmission they run in some of their other vehicles. And look, to be honest, it's actually not bad. From behind the wheel here, if I nail the throttle there, it is a little bit lazy there, but if you do have it in sport mode, it actually is ready to respond much quicker. So in sport mode, it's going to hold the gear, and then when I kick down, it gets up and starts moving a whole lot quicker there as well. So a little bit lazy, but it does get moving. In terms of the engine itself, it is really responsive. When you do get stuck into the throttle, it pins you back in the seat and you get that really beautiful feeling as it builds up the torque there and really just sort of mashes you in the back. Now Mazda claims a combined fuel economy of 8.2 litres per 100km. I'm a little dubious of that claim because an inline-six turbo is rarely ever going to achieve that kind of economy. And granted here on the Proving Ground, this car has only ever been driven here because it's left-hand drive, it can't be driven on the road. It is consuming significantly more than that, so we will reserve judgment until we actually get the car in Australia to see how it does perform in Australian conditions and what the economy is actually like. The diesel version of this is expected to use just over 5 litres per 100km, which is unreal in comparison, especially if the figure is true. Okay, let's have a look at our sine waves over here. We'll jack the speed up a little bit and see how this feels. We normally attack these at 130, we're speed restricted today to 120. Okay, we'll see what this ride feels like. That is fantastic. Yeah, nice. So look, even as a US-spec vehicle, it is performing incredibly well here. Normally with the US-spec vehicles, they're very soft, whereas this is soft but really nicely controlled with some excellent body control there. Now I want to explain to you how they've set up this chassis. So this is a rear-wheel drive platform, which means you've got an engine up the front and a drive shaft that goes to the back of the car. So it is predominantly rear-wheel driven, and when you design a rear-wheel drive platform, you are designing it so that you have those inherent performance characteristics. This only engages the front axle when it detects slip, or when you are towing or in off-road mode, it really sort of caters for those conditions. It actually has a locker clutch that can go all the way through to fully locked, which then delivers 50% of torque to the front and 50% of torque to the rear axle, and it can vary stages of locking in between. So you can get into scenarios where you are gradually locking it to give you better traction and control as you push it through a corner. Now let's talk drive mode. So let's slot it into sport, go for a little fang around our track here, see what this feels like. It's a bit weird being in a left-hand drive car here, because typically we're in a right-hand drive car. Yeah, nice. It actually feels really good. So it has got a degree of body roll there, but it feels very much in control, and it's communicating really nicely with me. Steering is very communicative too. Brakes there. Brakes feel nice and confidence-inspiring too. That sport mode's awesome. It's really holding the gears nicely. I don't have a camera on the Speedo today, but I'm getting some really good feedback through the whole package there. It's actually surprising how well it's handling for such a big car. That is unreal. Okay, we're going to roll onto our back straight here. Wow. This is really hauling along nicely. Very nice. I'm damn impressed with this. Yeah, so just on that sport mode there with the rear-wheel drive platform, this does feel very rear-wheel drive oriented. So when you do get into the throttle out of corners, you can feel it sending that torque to the rear, and you're really getting it tucking in nicely. The front wheels feel very much like an assistant to get it around that corner. So yeah, look, certainly from a performance point of view, I'll be keen to have this back-to-back with some of the German competitors, because I remember driving the Q7 here, the six-cylinder version at pace, and that thing felt pretty impressive. This really doesn't feel too far off it. So yeah, I'm quite impressed with what they've done here. Yeah, look, the other thing worth touching on now as well is the ride. I mentioned before on the sine waves that it is pretty nice and smooth. On our bumpier sections of road here, it does feel very nice and comfortable as well. It doesn't feel too soft or too hard. It really is a nice middle ground in between there. So I think they've done a good job with that. On the noise, it is pretty quiet inside the cabin here. I really don't hear much, and I'm keen to attack our noise right with the sound meter when we do get this back, see how it actually performs. Okay, let's swap this back into normal mode. Now, this uses a 48-volt mild hybrid system. Now, it's a fascinating setup because it actually allows the car to switch off at speed. So right now we're doing 40 k's an hour. The car is entirely off. I'm off the brake, touch the throttle, comes back on as well. So the 48-volt system allows it to switch off at speed to preserve the electronic systems, which inevitably saves fuel. In addition to that, it has an 11-kilowatt generator, so that's how much energy it can capture, and that all can then output at 12.4 kilowatts. So that is enough to run a lot of the systems around the car while it is switched off, and the driver really doesn't notice anything. It's a very seamless stop-start system as well. So when you do come to a stop and roll out of that and it fires up again, you really just don't notice anything. So it is a pretty sort of impressive feeling behind the wheel. So the Mazda CX-90. Look, I'm seriously impressed by this. I think that engine is fantastic, and it's a big departure from what Mazda offers at the moment. It's a big step up from a four-cylinder. It has plenty of confidence and plenty of punch. Not sold on the fuel economy just yet. Obviously, this is a pre-production car. We haven't been able to drive it anywhere but the Proving Ground because it is a left-hand drive car, but hopefully Mazda will be able to meet the claims they have because they are very ambitious for the diesel and the petrol as well. But keen to drive this when it does finally arrive in Australia. If you do have any questions, let me know in the comments section below. I'll answer as much as I possibly can before we finally get a proper version of this to test on Australia's roads. Let me know what you think about this as well. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates. And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.