2018 Subaru XV vs Mazda CX-3

What's the difference?

Subaru has a long history in Australia, and it can trace its adventurous origins all the way back to the early 1980s with the advent of cars like the Sportswagon and the ubiquitous Brumby ute. In fact, Subaru still typifies the affordable adventure car, with cars like the Forester and the Outback on its books.

The XV, meanwhile, sits somewhere in the middle of the two Subaru extremes, offering quirky inner city style with a genuinely useful adventure bent. 

If you're looking for the genesis of the small SUV apocalypse currently decimating small car sales, look no further than Mazda's CX-3.

Sure, others had done small SUVs earlier (the Kia Soul for one, and there were others), but it wasn't until the launch of Mazda's sleek little CX-3 - though don't let the numbers fool you, it's actually based on the Mazda2 - that the segment really got moving. 

Even now, several years after its launch, the CX-3 sits outright-second on the segment sales charts, a whisker behind the Mitsubishi ASX, and miles clear of its third-place rival. Which would normally be a cause for celebration in the Mazda camp. 

But there's a problem. Last year, the CX-3 was outright first. And so earlier this year, Mazda released a nipped-and-tucked version of its popular micro-SUV, presumably to try and improve its sales position by one.

So, we spent a week behind the wheel of the mid-spec (and most popular) CX-3 Maxx to see what's new.