Mazda CX-7 Review - Mazda Cx-7 Car Review

But if I could offer you a car that bears an uncanny resemblance to the Lexus, especially from the back, at half the price, would you be interested? No? What if I said it came fully equipped with air conditioning, Sat Nav, plus equally soft and comfortable leather seats all round?

It’s getting hard to resist now isn’t it? So why not book at test drive at your local Mazda dealer and see if I have talked their CX-7 up too much.

When you take it out for a spin, make sure the salesman straps himself in and let’s you go a bit further than the ring road. Not because the car will be hiding anything, its few faults will quite manifest by that stage, but because the Mazda only shows its best strengths when you take it to the open road.

If you stick to the salesman’s local route round the block, through the industrial estate and back up the high street, you will find it to be a bit lumpy around 30 mph . No matter what gear you try. And sat at the puffin crossing by the supermarket you may well think, “Wow that Sat Nav screen is impractically small.”

But hit the open road and it seems much less important because you remember you are in a Mazda. The click, click, click of the Mazda gearbox that is so very satisfying, the light steering that still gives you great feedback from the road. The grip, balance and poise as you sweep round corkscrew-like B-roads or along s-shape slip roads. For an SUV its handling is excellent.

If you have driven something like a Land Rover Discovery, where you almost have to stop to go round tight corners without it rolling onto its side, you will be amazed. You may even find yourself tempted to enter corners a little too quickly because it seems so driveable.  But as long as the salesman did fasten his seat belt everything should be OK. You’ll know if he didn’t because the CX-7 has all the latest safety gear including irritating seatbelt alarms.

 

Despite the handling, you never forget this is an SUV, because you site so high in those big comfy chairs. And that is the right word - they are more like chairs than car seats. Executive chairs is how I describe them. They made an incredibly long journey from North Norfolk to London just vanish.

But then I hit the city again, just as you will on your test drive. And so that you don’t get put off by the lumpiness at 30, or the small Sat Nav that is a little complicated to program, try this: Look for a small parallel parking space. As you go to reverse in, you will find that the Sat Nav switches to a reversing camera screen. Which makes parking the CX-7 an absolute piece of cake.

I tried it in the taxi rank at St Pancras train station because parking down there is not just at a premium but all the cabbies turn into kamikazes as soon as they get off the Pentonville Road. Even in these extraordinary circumstances it was easy to manoeuvre into a space just a few inches longer than the car.

Not only will your Lexus-driving neighbour be £15,000 worse off, he won’t be able to get into that space anywhere nearly as easily if you ask me.

There are an incredibly small number out there – which adds to their premium image without pushing prices up. The cheapest cars are £13,000. They are usually 3 years old with under 30,000 miles. Or there are nearly new models for around £25,000. So even though there are less than a hundred on the used market to choose from nationwide there is something for everyone.

The Mazda CX-7 shares its platform with Ford’s equally impressive Kuga. Which explains why the handling in both is so similarly impressive.  

You could also consider a Nissan QashQai. But it is not as Lexus-like and yet is the same money as the Mazda and Ford.