The CX-60 review: it’s Mazda’s big play

With the CX-60, Mazda hopes to take on the ritzier European marques. And this classy new SUV has a neat party trick...

A cut above: the Mazda CX-60

If you saw someone about to set off for a horse ride with their knees tucked up into their armpits, their face rammed into the animal’s mane and their hands gripped rigidly around its neck, you’d be more than a little concerned for their safety and probably assume they were inexperienced, terrified, or both.

And yet, pretty much every day, I drive past people looking just like that in their cars – clutching the steering wheel to their chests, their seat raised as close to the roof as possible, sitting so close to the dashboard that they could rest their chattering chins on it – and no one seems to worry about it.

At the other end of the sanity spectrum you’ll see drivers sitting so far back they can rest their heads on the rear seat, seemingly steering the car with the underside of their left wrist while their right appendage hangs uselessly on the door sill in full, fat-arming style. I like to call these inept goons “young people”.

Mazda’s CX-60 on the road

One of the numerous problems with continuing to allow parents to teach their children to drive – rather than getting professionals to do it – is that they pass on woeful habits. And no one seems to know how to set up their driving position properly, even though it’s the bedrock of being a better driver. My advice, in a nutshell? Sit down nice and low – as opposed to the high-chair, up-in-the-air angle adopted by some people I am married to – and you are forced to keep your eyes up and look further ahead of you.

Fortunately, Mazda has come up with an answer so clever and tricksy that a bunch of German engineers somewhere will be kicking themselves. It’s called the Driver Personalisation System. Launched on Mazda’s new and classy SUV, the CX-60, this system uses a camera on its central touchscreen to measure your eyeline, and you’re also asked to enter your height.

Then, in a period of time that could only be described as one jiffy, it automatically adjusts your seat, the steering-wheel reach and rake, the wing mirrors and the positioning of the head-up display so that you are – possibly for the first time –sitting in the perfect driving position.

Cleverly, the same camera then uses facial recognition software every time you get in the car to instantly set things up for you, or the people you share the CX-60 with. Aside from your seat position, it also saves a staggering 250 “personalisation values”, which includes everything from your favourite radio station to your preferred aircon temperature (no, I can’t imagine what the other 248 are, either). The Personalisation System speaks to Mazda’s favourite Japanese phrase, “Jinba Ittai”, which is the concept of “horse and driver as one”. You can only feel part of the car if you sit in the saddle properly, obviously.

The CX-60 is hugely important to Mazda as the company pushes upwards into the premium space in an attempt to hold on to the kind of buyers who might have grown up driving a 2, 3, 6 or CX-5 and then reached the point where they feel the need to buy something more ritzy and European. It represents a major shift for the brand, as it uses a new, rear-drive architecture and will be offered with longitudinally mounted straight six-cylinder engines, just like a proper BMW.

Inside the cabin

There’s been a big effort to make the CX-60 look and feel European as well, and while the interiors of the cars we drove at the launch in Portugal wouldn’t scare an Audi dealer, there’s no doubt the exterior styling is top notch, and classy. I think it looks a bit like a Jaguar F-Type, and that is very much meant as praise.

Occasionally, in their desperation to hear what the media thinks, car companies will let us drive “pre-production” versions of their vehicles, and that was the case with the new CX-60 PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) we tried – the company’s first plug-in powertrain. It uses a 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine and a 100kW electric motor with a 17.8kWh lithium-ion battery, which would allow you to drive “more than 60km” in electric-only mode. Think of it as an EV for people who are afraid to buy EVs, or, to put it another way, most Australians. Its combined outputs are 241kW and 500Nm, making this the most powerful Mazda the world has ever seen, with a 0 to 100km/h dash of just 5.8 seconds.

Plugged in to recharge

In Sport mode, the CX-60 was dashing, a bit shouty and undeniably fizzing to drive, although it could also cruise quietly and smoothly on freeways. In its EV and Normal modes, however, it sometimes felt like it was having to think too hard about which powertrain was doing what, and it made some strange whimpering sounds while doing so. Hopefully these oddities will be banished before the production versions arrive in Australia later this year.

The most promising thing about the CX-60 driving experience, however, was the way it handled and cornered, with a lovely flat posture and plenty of driver involvement. It’s the kind of thing you don’t really expect, or arguably need, in a family SUV like this – but then you could argue that the kind of people who like that kind of thing usually spend big and go German.

Mazda’s big play with this car is to suggest that you won’t need to do that any more. If they can pull that off, they’ll be sitting as pretty as a CX-60 driver.

MAZDA CX-60 PHEV

ENGINE: 2.5-litre four-cylinder plus 100kW electric motor (241kW/500Nm). Average fuel 1.5 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: 8-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

PRICE: About $55,000

STARS: 3.5 out of 5