2017 Mazda CX-5 vs 2020

What's the difference?

The Mazda CX-5 was a genuine phenomenon. It pretty much came out of nowhere and knocked off a few cars we previously thought had an unassailable grasp on the Australian SUV budget.

Even more extraordinary was the fact the stylish CX-5 came from a company that had given us a fairly bland decade of cars, after a flourish in the late '90s descended into a series of dull boxes (although the 3 did signal a revival).

I drove a first-gen CX-5 late in its life and found it hard to believe it needed replacing. But in 2017 that's exactly what Mazda did. Fresh sheetmetal, lots of detail work, and a new interior were all dropped on to a lightly updated chassis to give us the second-generation CX-5.

And a lot faces ended up buried in hands at other car companies because it turns out Mazda did a smashing job second time around.

I think it's fair to say the Mazda CX-5 has done about as much a single model line could have done for the population explosion of SUVs. The car is still selling like crazy when the economy isn't crippled by a global pandemic and that's despite the second-generation shuffling itself into more upmarket territory.

The CX-5 Akera is not the car people tend to go into Mazda dealers to buy without first doing their homework. Despite hardly anyone (relatively speaking) buying the Akera, you have a choice of three engines, the naturally aspirated petrol, the turbo-petrol and the turbo-diesel (in ascending price order).

The latter two both start at over $50,000. You can't spend that much on a Tucson or a Sportage, or even a RAV4. So you're going to want to know what you're getting yourself into, right?