2024 Mazda CX50 18 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Welcome to the Shift List, my name is Matt and this is the rugged counterpart to Mazda's best-selling CX-5. And while we liked that quite a bit when we tested it the other week, this is the CX-50. And is it even better? Well today I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this CX-50. The first thing is, let's cover what's new for 2024. Now there's not a lot, but there are a few things that have been changed. One is there's some suspension and steering changes that they've made for 2024 cars to make it feel a little bit better on the road. And your Bose speakers and wireless charger are now standard on premium trims and up. And there's no more base S trim for 2024. But this thing's cousin is the CX-5. So how is this different? Well you do, as you can see from the side, have a lower roofline. You've also got wider shoulders and hips, which you can see a little bit up here. Look at how flared that front fender looks. And you also have a longer car in general. This thing is several inches longer than you get in the CX-5. And in the rear, your suspension is different. The whole chassis is different. And you get torsion beam rear suspension here. Let's take one more look at those flared rear hips. But what's under the hood? Well you actually get the same options that you would in a CX-5. You get the base engine, which is a 2.5 naturally aspirated four-cylinder. Makes about 187 horsepower, 186 pound-feet of torque, rated at about 27 mpg, which probably makes sense because in my CX-5 from 2016 with the NA motor, I'm getting about 28 just over. But if you want to upgrade to the Skyactiv-G turbo, it's the same 2.5 four-cylinder, but you now get a turbo or twin scroll turbo, I should say. And that boosts power up on premium gas to 256 horsepower and 320 pound-feet. That makes it the most powerful in the segment, well I guess technically tied with the CX-5 turbo. And this thing will drop fuel economy with the turbo to 25 mpg combined. And one of my favorite things about the CX-50, and really all Mazda crossovers, is that you get all-wheel drive as standard. And you get g-vectoring here as well. And speaking of standard, there's a bunch of standard equipment that you get here. You get all-wheel drive as we mentioned. You get LED headlights with high beam control. You get chrome roof rails. Those are standard. You get automatic windshield wipers, which has been nice for the snowy week. You get smart entry. You get wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto. And you get a leatherette interior as standard. One of my favorite things about these Mazda SUVs has to be the looks. These things look fantastic. Now there's seven different paint colors that you can get for your CX-50. There's five optional ones, with two of them being standard. The Meridian trim, which is their off-road trim, only gets two paint color options. I believe it's this gray, as well as the Zircon Sand Metallic. I do like the grille, though. It's a little bit squatter. It's a little bit shorter, but you've got this chain mail type look in there. You do have some funky headlights, which apparently, when you turn the headlights on auto, the very cool BMW Angel Eye type LED runner, that's on, but so is the projector. So you don't really get to appreciate it. If you go into just the parking lights, the running light, the Angel Eye, is still on, but it's very, very dim. So you don't get to appreciate it as much. And then down here, this is your amber turn signal, and that is pretty much always on solid, and then just blinks when you're using it as a turn signal. But I will say, the LEDs are standard, so that's nice. Around the side, you do have loads of cladding on your wheel arches, and down your side skirt. Your wheels range from 17 inches up to 20. You get 18s on the Meridian. These are the 20s that you see here. We talked about these flared hips back here, and look at this. Black window treatments, aside for this little fang back here. It's almost a Hofmeister kink. Very BMW influence here. And then full LED taillights on turbo cars only, and you do get this dual chrome exhaust down here with, again, a little accent fake vent here. But while we're back here, we'll talk about the trunk. It is not kick jester, which is a little bit annoying, but you do have a powered trunk, and you do have buttons for close and close and lock, which you don't have on the RAV4. But when you look in here, you've got 31 cubic feet of space with the rear seats up. That is pretty good. That's pretty big. It's bigger than the CX-5. You can fold the rear seats from these little toggles here, but with the rear seats down, you're only looking at about 56 cubic feet of space, which is actually less than you get in the CX-5. The seats do fold totally flat, which is pretty good, and you get a little bit of storage under the floor. Voila. There's your spare tire. Not Ling Long. And while we're back here, we might as well talk towing. You get about 2,000 pounds of towing capacity if you're non-turbo, but if you go for the turbo powertrain, you get up to 3,500 pounds of towing capacity, and that's actually a lot. I suspect a lot of that is due to the torsion beam rear axle that you get back here. It's a little bit stronger. It's better for towing and off-roading. And then looking at the rear seats, check this out. First of all, the door opens 90 degrees, which is super nice. Makes it easier to load stuff like kids in the back, but it is just a nice space back here. I'm going to sit in here. I'm 6'1". I've got a couple inches of knee room. This seat is actually kind of artificially back. I'll sit behind myself. See, I've got a couple inches of knee room. Not huge, but definitely more than the CX-5. I do have a little bit less headroom, though, than I would in the CX-5, but I do have some nice luxuries here. I've got climate vents. I've got the optional rear heated seats. I've got some map pockets, but only on the passenger side. But look at this beautiful terra cotta interior with the cross stitch and the accenting. It's just nice back here. And what do we have above us? But a pano roof. This is the first Mazda to have ever gotten a panoramic roof, which is fabulous, except for it does a little bit of rattling. Something over here has been rattling all week. I haven't noticed that in past CX-50s that I've tested, but I have noticed it this week. Maybe it's something to do with the cold. And then, of course, we'll touch on the front seats. Again, terra cotta interior, exclusively for turbo cars. Beautiful brown, and this almost looks like a carbon fiber texture in here. Cross stitched down the center. Very, very classy. They're heated. They're cooled, but only in the top trim premium plus that we're in here for the turbo. We do have two-level seats up here as well. Two-level or two-person memory, I should say, but very nice. Comfortable. Definitely more comfortable than the CX-5, this seat. And I do want to touch on interior design just briefly because I think it's worth mentioning. Now, black is the base option for your interior. You're not going to get cloth anymore, but you are going to get black as standard. The terra cotta interior, which is what we have here, is only available on the turbo cars, but you've got a really nice detailing in the dasher. You've got that cross stitch from the seats, but look at that. Look at the squish. I mean, this is a very, very small detail, but it goes a long way to making this feel a lot more expensive and really nice. You've also got a different steering wheel than you do in the CX-5. I like it. It's a little bit smaller. It looks a little bit more modern. Of course, it is heated, which is quite nice. You've got paddle shifters and all that good stuff, but this is just a really, really nice kind of minimal modern design. It looks a little bit more upscale than the CX-5. And we're going to talk screens, starting with your head-up display, which you have. You have a head-up display here, which is not something that everyone can say, so I think that's quite nice. But you come down here into your center instrument cluster, your seven-inch digital instrument cluster, which is a little bit whack because it really doesn't have much customizability to it. It's got one, two fuel economy screens, and then something for your driver assist system, so it's not super customizable. A lot of them are bringing fully digital instrument clusters, so maybe I'd like to see that, but it's okay. You come over here, and you've got your 10.25-inch infotainment system. In your native screen here, it is not touchscreen. You do have to use the wheel, but in Apple CarPlay, it is going to be touchscreen, so that's nice. I did complain about that in the CX-5. I will say here in the CX-50, the screen is moved back a little bit more, so I probably would find myself using the scroll wheel a little bit more, so maybe the touchscreen isn't a huge deal. It is probably a personal preference thing. The only other thing to note is when I throw it into reverse, I do have a 360 camera, which is kind of nice. It does have the bars which it's had for a few years, or at least the CX-5 has for a few years now. It's okay. It's not amazing. This Premium Plus Turbo top trim is the only one that you're going to get a 360 camera in, and the only reason I think that that's a big deal is because in the Meridian version, which is the full off-road orientation, I think that should have 360 cameras, so you can spot where you are on the trail and see your tolerances. I think that would be helpful, and this is not a digital rearview mirror, which I don't personally care about, but some people are bringing a digital rearview mirror in this class. One thing I do care about is the driver assist systems. It's okay here. You get Adaptive Cruise, you get Forward Collision Mitigation, all that stuff, but you do get Lane Keep Assist. It's kind of a passive. It'll, like, nudge you back, but you can't do, like, the full Hyundai H-DAS system. It's not going to do a lane centering. It's not going to drive for you like you would get in a Hyundai system or a Honda system or Toyota or really anyone else, so this is what I would say on the lower end of the development spectrum, the driver assist suite here on Mazda, but that's pretty par for the course on all the Mazdas that we've tested over the last two, three years. You see this little toggle here? You have My Drive. This is your drive mode selector, so you've got Sport, Normal, and Off-Road, and I was reading in the press materials that turbo cars are supposed to have a towing mode, which I don't think you can access from here, but maybe you can access it somewhere else. If you can, I haven't found it, so let me know in the comments if there's a towing mode here, and we've referenced it a couple times, but I do want to take a minute to talk about the Meridian Edition, which is not the trim that we have here, but it is their more off-road specific trim. It only comes in the turbo form. You can't get the naturally aspirated engine in the Meridian. You get cool hood graphics. You get a side rock garnish, and you do get black lug nuts with unique 18-inch wheels, but the thing is you get 0.1 inches less clearance than in four other trims of CX-50. You get 0.1 degree less approach and departure angle than a CX-50 Premium Plus, so does that make the Premium Plus the best off-roader then? But it isn't going to get the all-terrain tires like you're going to get on the Meridian, so the Meridian looks cool, but it may be more of an appearance package with some slight off-road tires than anything else. If you want a more serious off-roader, I would maybe look for the Subaru Wilderness. Then there's just a couple things here and there that I think we should talk about. Like all the windows, every single one of them is auto up-down. Love to see that. And if you don't have your seat belt on when you start the car, even though the parking brake is on and you're in park, it's going to ding at you a million times. See? And your cup holders are here in front of the shifter, which I don't generally mind, but with this bottle, if it's facing a certain way, it could turn on the heated and cooled seats, so it's a bit annoying. It's also just in contact with the dashboard, and I don't want to scuff my dash with my bottle. Also, I think I mentioned it earlier, but the seats here are noticeably more comfortable than they are on the CX-5. And I noticed this. When you put it in park and you turn the car off, you go around, open the door, not all the doors unlock. So if you just come up, drive home, park the car, get out, you want to get something from the back seat, you have to make sure that you unlock the car. There's also an interesting thing the speedometer does. So if you're driving around in a 25, any degree or any mile per hour that you go over the speed limit, it's going to show a red line to show you just how much you're going over the limit, because it, of course, has cameras to read speed limit signs. And when you're driving and you come to a stop, throw it in park, you turn the car off, it automatically applies the parking brake. So that's kind of nice. And the last thing we'll talk about, as it always is, is price. Now, a CX-50 starts at $30,000. That makes it the most expensive, I believe, in the segment, if we're not counting hybrids and things like that. But if you want the turbo, turbo starts at $38,000. And again, that becomes a lot of money. And as tested in the top trim, it's even more than that. But let's grab the key and go for a drive in our Mazda CX-50. Snowy launch in the CX-50. Loads of wheel spin. Now we have traction, though. I will say, this thing has been brilliant in the snow this week. This is, like, the second, the day that the car was dropped off and today are the only days this week that it hasn't been snowing. So this thing has been faultless in the snow, which has been very good. We've also had a Subaru Ascent this week, which has also been very good in the snow. So I'm impressed. I'm impressed. But anyway, behind the wheel of the CX-50 here, we kind of talked about it. This is the most powerful in the segment with its turbocharged four-cylinder, this and the CX-5 twin. 256 horsepower, 320 pound feet of torque, really torquey, low down torque. And as you rev it out, it even, it sounds refined. It sounds like a good engine. It sounds very BMW in a way, which as we've talked about this whole video, there's a lot about this car that feels BMW. The thing that I don't love is the steering as we just go through that roundabout there. It does feel a little bit less communicative than the CX-5. It doesn't feel quite as sharp or as keyed up. This is a little bit longer wheelbase. It does have that torsion beam rear axle rather than the multi-link suspension that you get in the CX-5. So it doesn't feel quite as nimble or sprightly. It does feel maybe a little bit more refined, a little bit more substantial, which is probably what you want for just day-to-day cruising. But if you are going to drive it in a spirited fashion, it won't be quite, and I'm saying this, this is very marginal. It's going to be marginally worse than the CX-5. So it's very small. You really got to look for the difference. But in terms of the damping, it's great. Makes sense for the car that this is. The cabin isolation is pretty good. It does feel very sturdy, very luxe. The only thing that's kind of annoying is there has been a little bit of a rattle coming from the panel roof. But other than that, it would feel genuine luxury to here. But even here, you know, we've got pretty good traction from the all-wheel drive system. The g-vectoring system is doing its thing. Got good torque. I like the paddle shifters, six-speed automatic. Yeah, I mean, it's a good thing to drive in the sense that, you know, it's a Mazda just because it's a slightly more off-road oriented version doesn't mean it's not a Mazda. And that's something that Mazda really set out with when they went to design this car. They said that they wanted to have something that was still going to keep its Mazda ethos, still keep that driving signature. So they weren't going to sacrifice the on-road feel just to give it a little bit more off-roadiness because they're pretty realistic with who's going to buy this and what they're actually going to use it for. So at the end of the day, I like this thing quite a bit. But if you want to see how this CX-50 compares to the CX-5, the CR-V, the RAV4, and a bunch of the others in the segment, make sure you check out Downshift's Best in the Rest video with this, which is on the channel now. But until then, thank you to Mazda for letting us have a go. Thank you to you for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.