2018 Mazda 6 vs Mazda CX-5

What's the difference?

The Mazda 6's competition is not nearly as good looking, and none have that smooth 2.5-litre turbo to get them whistling along with such little fuss.

You can buy a Camry and enjoy the solid drive, or a Kia Optima and enjoy the, erm, exclusivity. Or the turbo Hyundai Sonata, which is also somewhat exclusive.

The GT is a terrific car, and it's terrific because of its smooth, powerful and calming engine. It's a shame that the engine is only available in the top end of the range, though...

The CX-5 GT is a triumph of style and substance. The range is generally a tremendous value-for-money line-up and this upper-echelon offering is no different because a GT buyer will want for nothing – except perhaps Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and if we can live without those, you can too. More of a city-friendly SUV than a rough-and-ready off-roader, the GT is still capable of getting you to where you want to go, as long as you have a realistic notion of AWD-suitable terrain: think formed trails, well-maintained National Parks tracks and perhaps even, at a stretch, very firm sand.

Is the CX-5 a legitimate Adventure vehicle, or should it stay in the suburbs? Tell us what you think the comments below.

The 6 is a seriously good-looking car, and I mean that in a head-turning, wolf-whistling kind of way.

Mazda's Kodo design language rarely disappoints. Here in the 6, the facelift is similar in nature to the CX-5 - slimmed headlights, simplified shapes front and rear, but a muscular, lithe profile.

Changes in the cabin have been more noticeable, because unlike the exterior design, Things Needed To Happen. The old interior wasn't bad, but Mazda had this terrible habit of making its cabins dark and gloomy.

A simple thing like sending some of the indicator lights up into a unit with the rear vision mirror significantly reduced the clutter on the centre console. There's a distinct Audi influence in the way the horizontal stacked sections make the cabin feel wider and more airy, too. Just about everything has been changed, except the steering wheel and the shifter, and it's worked.

People who know me, know that I put more stock in what’s under the bonnet than appearance but, having said that, I am still capable of appreciating attractive things. The previous version of the CX-5 looked good; this new one looks damn good. Everything is simply neater, sleeker and more streamlined than before, inside and outside.

Fit and finish is tighter and all materials and designs complement, rather than clash with, each other. That bright white leather – adding a real overall touch of class – doesn’t hurt either.

This CX-5 looks and feels like it sits more comfortably in the realm of sports cars than that of family-friendly SUVs – but I spend zero time in sport cars, so what do I know?

Front-seat passengers score a pair of cupholders with a neat cover for when they're not in use. The centre console is on the smaller side, but a decent phone cubby under the climate controls makes up for that. The fold-down centre armrest features a pair of cupholders, too, plus there's a slot to hold a phone or small tablet upright, and a small lidded tray with a pair of USB ports.

There is plenty of room for front-seat passengers, and even those in the rear won't run into any headroom trouble. There is plenty of leg room, too, as well as decent foot room. Smaller folks will be okay in the middle seat.

Boot space isn't too bad, at 474 litres (VDA) with the rear seats in place.

From the front to the back everything is pretty well suited for day-to-day life.

There is ample room for driver and passenger up front with electric adjustment for those forward pews.

Second-row travellers also get stacks of leg and headroom and the driver seat goes nowhere near encroaching on space behind. When it comes time to collapse those second-row seats, it is a 40/20/40 split.

Storage solutions include a space for phones and loose change in front of the shifter, four cupholders (two up front and a pair in the second-row centre arm-rest), and a bottle-recess in each door. Annoyingly, there are two USB ports in the glovebox, which is deep enough for a dog to sit in (only joking!), so it is difficult for the driver to readily access those as a charging point.

There are air vents for both rows.

Down the back, cargo space is 442 litres with the second row up; and 1342 litres with that row flat.

Our review vehicle – an upper-spec Mazda CX-5 GT AWD diesel – had a manufacturer listed price of $47,390 at standard spec, but ours also had Soul Red paint ($300) and optional front and rear floor mats at a cost of $187.02. There is a stack of gear for the price as standard including keyless entry and start, a 7.0-inch touchscreen (with Mazda’s MZD Connect multimedia system but no Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), satnav, reversing camera,  front and rear parking sensors, head-up display, cruise control, a 10-speaker Bose stereo, dual-zone climate control, electric front seats, white leather trim, auto wipers, powered and heated folding mirrors, power windows, a sunroof, electric tailgate, 19-inch alloy wheels and a space-saver spare tyre (tucked under the cargo floor). There’s also active automatic LED headlights, LED foglight and plenty of active and passive driver aids.

Mazda slaps a 'SkyActiv' badge on just about everything, so it will be no surprise to find that this engine bears the name. The GT's 2.5-litre four cylinder spins up 170kW and 420Nm - the same figure as the CX-9, but with a quite a few less kilos to haul.

The 6 is front-wheel drive, and power reaches those wheels via a six-speed automatic. I didn't think a six-speed 'box would be enough, but it didn't bother me at all.

Towing capacity is rated at 550kg unbraked and 1550kg braked.

The GT has a 2.2-litre SkyActiv diesel engine – producing 129kW@4500rpm and a chunky 420Nm@2000rpm – matched to a six-speed automatic transmission. No complaints about this pairing.

Mazda says that the 2.5-litre turbo drinks 91RON (yep, the cheaper stuff) at the rate of 7.5L/100km.

My week with the car in mostly urban driving yielded a disappointing 11.3L/100km. That might have had something to do with my right foot, but that's classified information.

We recorded 8.3L/100km for about 160km of daily driving (country, suburban, city and freeway) and 8.7L/100km for 150km of AWD-appropriate touring (including a substantial amount of dirt-road driving). The CX-5 has a 58-litre fuel tank

Okay, I feel I've misled you a little, way back at the beginning of this story.

I feel like I may have intimated that shoving this turbocharged engine under the bonnet meant a transformation to something a bit hotter. After all, it has a lot more torque than the fondly remembered 6 MPS, and isn't all that short of that monster's power figure either.

It's nowhere near a replacement for the 6 MPS, though. In fact, it's better than that.

Mazda got out of performance cars a long time ago, preferring to just pretend there's another RX-7 on the way (that story always surfaces in April for some reason). The new turbo engine isn't a huffing, puffing performer. It's actually borderline dull. It isn't peaky or laggy, but super-quiet and super smooth.

You can surf along on the torque, overtake with far less planning and buttock-clenching.

Adding the turbo engine to the 6 fixes what was an extremely competent car looking for a good engine. The standard petrol in the lower-spec cars is adequate, but it's not really up to the task of swift, effortless progress.

This turbocharged unit actually calms the driving experience because you know you can surf along on the torque, overtake with far less planning and buttock-clenching.

The rest of the car? Well it's as lovely and easygoing as ever. The new car is stiffer than before, and, like most Mazda updates, is filled with detail changes that add up to a significant improvement.

It's so much quieter, too, with just a bit of racket from the GT's bigger wheels over coarse surfaces. Most of the suspension noise from the older cars is gone.

Passengers really liked the interior of the 6, with its broader, airier feel, and in Soul Red with the white interior, it looks properly classy.

This CX-5 is 4550mm long, 1840mm wide, 1675mm high has a claimed kerb weight of 1744kg and an 11.2m turning circle. It feels low and long – even though it’s not really – and is rock-steady to drive, at any speed.

This CX-5 never feels like anything but a supremely well put-together unit and that makes for a smooth driving experience. Steering is light at the right time and takes on a real weight when you need it to; the 2.2-litre engine is eager and works well off changes in the six-speed auto.

It’s better suited to open-road cruising, than stop-start city driving as it tends to lag off the mark when you actually need it to swiftly budge.

Mazda reckons its staff have worked hard to make the current CX-5’s NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) levels much better than those in the previous model, but we’d never noticed anything in that earlier thing, and nothing in this latest model, so we have to take their word for it.

The GT is on 19-inch alloys, shod with Toyo Proxes R46 rubber.

The CX-5 has a five-star ANCAP safety rating, as a result of testing conducted in September 2017. It has six airbags, ABS, reversing camera, blind-spot monitoring, reverse cross-traffic alert, front and rear auto emergency braking and more. It has two ISOFIX and three top-tether points.

Mazda recently increased its long-standing three-year warranty to five years/unlimited kilometres, which was odd, because at the car's launch in May, they said three years was plenty. Still, I'm not arguing with the change.

Roadside assist, sadly, is not part of the deal. It costs between $99 and $109 per year.

Service intervals are a bit close at 12 months or 10,000km, whichever comes first. Prices are capped for the first five years, alternating between $312 and $341 for a total of $1618 for the first 50,000km.

Mazda offers a three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty on the CX-5; capped price servicing is included. The servicing schedule is set at six months/10,000km and will cost from $317 to $387.