Read our full long-term report here
How reliable was the car in everyday use?
I ran a CX-80 PHEV for several months and had no mechanical issues, interior rattles or digital glitches to speak of when it departed with just over 7000 miles on the clock.
How efficient was the car in the real world?
I ran a PHEV despite not having a charger at home but can occasionally use one at work, or indeed pay to use a public one – silly but a common predicament for company car drivers these days, due to the way benefit-in-kind taxation currently works. My PHEV had an official economy figure of 177mpg but, with me doing long motorway commutes and charging the battery only a small amount each week, it averaged 39mpg overall. When I did charge it fully, the average for a tank rose to 80mpg. When I emptied a tank on a flat battery, it returned just 31mpg. Such is the way with any PHEV.
How did you get on with the infotainment system?
Mazda is unique in giving you both a rotary control dial and a touchscreen but then disabling the touch control functionality when you’re driving. I commend this decision by Mazda, taken to prevent dangerous driver distraction, and I’ve always found the company’s BMW iDrive-esque dial to be highly intuitive. Same with its menu structures. However, Apple CarPlay was not designed with dial control in mind, and you can really tell. Choosing between Apple Maps route options was particuarly exasperating.
How effective and reliable were the safety systems?
I’m one of the biggest ADAS critics at Autocar (a position for which there is stiff competition) and my CX-80 was fitted with the £1950 Convenience and Driver Assistance Pack, which added yet more of the things. A recipe for disaster? Not exactly: the behaviour of the system was mostly (but not invariably) acceptable to me, while most (but not all) of the annoying warning bongs could be deactivated at the tap of a single button down by my right knee.
How practical was the car?
At 5ft 8in tall, I found myself comfortable in the third row of this seven-seater, and I also found it relatively easy to access after folding down a middle-row seat. I wouldn’t want to be an inch taller or wider, though, if I were going to be back there for any considerable amount of time. Meanwhile, having only five seats in place made for an enormous boot: I managed to squeeze in my mountain bike with both of its 29in wheels still attached, which is a real rarity.
KRIS CULMER
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