Mazda CX-8 2019 News

Mazda has long been sailing high at the number two spot on Australia's car sales charts, but a confluence of events this year has threatened the long-running fan favourite that could be in danger of slipping from its position.After eight months of trading

New-car sales have continued their slump in August - the 17th consecutive months of declines - with Australia now declared one of the most difficult markets in the world.Car makers reported 85,633 sales in August, which is around 10 per cent less than we

Mazda has tweaked and updated its CX-8 seven-seat SUV range for 2019.

The whole point of the Mazda CX-8 was to offer a seven-seat diesel SUV, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.That’s the message from Mazda Australia, following a recent announcement out of Japan that in the brand’s home market there would be a turbocharged petrol version of the CX-8.The new 2.5-litre turbo petrol four-cylinder has just been added to the CX-5 medium SUV, and is already available in the bigger CX-9 seven-seater. So, according to Mazda Australia marketing director, Alastair Doak, there’s no reason to consider a petrol CX-8.“When we brought in the new CX-8, we did so as a point of difference. That was the justification for offering the diesel model here,” he said. The CX-8 hasn’t set the sales charts alight in its first few months on sale, registering only 1128 sales from June to the end of October. By this year’s sales figures, that’s less than the CX-5 averages in two weeks - but it’s early days yet for the diesel-powered CX-8 seven-seater.Another SUV we won’t see in Australia is the CX-4, which is essentially a swoopy-roofed version of the CX-5. That model is made in China in left-hand drive only, and as such, won’t be sold locally.Despite all that, the CX-3, CX-5, CX-8 and CX-9 are set to combine for more than 50,000 Mazda SUVs sold in Australia in 2018. To the end of October, Mazda had managed to sell 44,011 SUVs, against 39,093 passenger cars and 11,142 utes. “We’re very happy with the range that we’ve got, and everything is firing well,” said Doak. Basically, everything that’s available to us, we have. We will consider adding extra SUVs if more things become available to us.”And it seems there is more to come - Doak suggested that 2019 could see “some pretty good things”, but wouldn’t say anymore than that.