Hey, everybody, it's Peter and I'm here on a windy day in Fredericton, New Brunswick to take an in depth look at the Mazda CX-5. This is a very interesting vehicle to me, but not so much from just looking at it in a brief overview. What I found is a few things that other videos aren't showing you and those are some of the things I'm going to bring up and talk to you about in this video. And I want you to know that I have full access to the entire lineup of vehicles here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals in Fredericton New Brunswick. So that makes it great for you because if you have a question or comment about this vehicle, you can let me know in the comments below and I can answer that comment and I can also make future videos comparing this vehicle to itself, to other vehicles in the class and to all kinds of different vehicles.

So do me a favor, hit the subscribe button and if you're in Fredericton, New Brunswick, swing by Jim Gilbert's Wheels Deals and check out this vehicle. Now, this vehicle is Mazda's Miata of the small crossover segment because Mazda's entire reputation is basically built on the Mazda Miata. And to be fair to them, this is a sportier to drive vehicle than other vehicles in the class. But to me, just looking at it, it's not really standing out in any way. Used to have great styling, but a lot of the other crossovers have kind of stepped up their game and the styling is kind of matched among the class. Where this particular vehicle stands out is with the turbo engine. And I've got a cheat sheet to go through to show you a little bit more about this turbo engine and talk to you about things that other videos aren't showing you. Let's do that right now.

All right, I know what you're thinking. Every vehicle in the class pretty much now has a turbo engine. The reason they're putting turbo engines in things is to give them more power while still giving them great fuel economy in at least the testing numbers. Because turbo engines when you get into the throttle, use just as much fuel as bigger engines, but they test well in the testing cycle. But this turbo engine is kind of unique because Mazda has a focus on performance. Here's the cheat sheet I talked about. The regular Mazda CX-5, 187 horsepower, 186 lb-ft of torque, that's kind of normal stuff for the class. This vehicle, 227 horsepower, that's impressive. 310 lb-ft of torque, but that's not all. You could actually increase the performance of this vehicle by simply putting in premium fuel where Mazda advertise that 227 horsepower will jump to 256 and the 310 lb-ft of torque can jump to 320. 320 lb-ft of torque is more than a lot of mid-size trucks on the lot that tow 7,000 pounds.

This thing's got some grunt, this thing's got some get up and go and Mazda really is committed to making it fun. They're also committed to making it safe. While we're at the front here, let's just take a look at a couple little features here. You've got really nice LED lighting out front here. They do a good job of kind of... It's windy here. They do a good job of having nice bright white LED lights and a lot of cars have some smart radar in the front. This one's got smart cruise control. Usually you have a sort of rectangularish square box that kind of is ugly. Mazda hides it here behind their logo, so you have a massive logo, but it has some function there as well. And that allows you to have that smart cruise control which we're going to talk about when we go into the vehicle.

Let's go around the back, show you a couple things there and it's really cold outside, so I'm looking forward to getting inside the vehicle and showing you the details there. We'll show you more things other people aren't talking about. Take a look at the back of the CX-5. Nothing too special, but you do have some pretty cool lights up here. They match the Mazda MX-5 Miata. They're very fairly similar. They also kind of compliment the front lights which have a very similar look to with the sort of ring around in the light in the center. So kind of cool lighting here. I think it stands out in the class a little bit, but again, nothing too fancy there. Popping open the trunk here. It is a powered tailgate. We're going to let it come up. Mazda does a couple of really good things here.

I'm going to bring the camera in and show you a little bit closer as we do this but they have a 40/20/40 split. I think that really makes sense in this class because you can give people two comfortable seats while folding down the center seat if you want to. Under floor storage is common in the class, not as much in this one. You've got a spare tire in here, some room around it, but not a ton of space. But you do have a very good open space here and it's carpeted the entire way through her, which means no plastically rattly kind of stuff when you throw it in the trunk here. Let me bring the camera closer and we'll show you one little feature that they do really well that other people don't get done as well or other vehicles in the class don't do as well.

All right. Cargo cover, a lot of people do. Now, what I think has done really well is the handle system here. This bigger handle here, if I pop that this seat would go down. The little handle inside of that allows the center seat to go down. And on the other side is another sort of larger handle, which obviously does that side. Really easy to reach, really easy to pop those seats down. And then again, really good space for the size of this vehicle. In here with the seats folded down and this removed, you can fit a number of larger items in there and it's simple to get to with those simple handles. All right, we're going to get to the driver's environment in just a second here. I just locked the door on the car, so let's try to unlock it there for a second. We've got them all unlocked.

Here is the rear seat. All right, rear seat in a small crossover, they're getting better. How's the Mazda? Well, I've set this seat up for me. I'm a six footer and you can see leg room is fine. What I'm really impressed with is the foot room. Even with large winter boots, work boots, you can fit them in there. As far as the overall space here, my legs are flush on the seat. You've got pockets and vents here. Pretty good back here. Not class leading, but very comfortable for a six footer. Let's talk about the driver's environment next because that's where this car stands out.

All right, we're sitting inside the Mazda CX-5 and frankly I'm quite happy to be here. It is cold and windy outside so normally I show you the key on the outside but we're trying to keep everything warm, including my camera equipment that hopefully doesn't shut down as the batteries get so cold. This is your key fob. Pretty simple stuff with very small buttons on the side. Now there's a pro and a con here. The buttons on the side, although they are small, you will not accidentally hit them. That's where you want to place them so you don't accidentally hit them. And I think it works just fine. Again, you barely have to pull this out of your pocket at all because just approaching the car, hitting the button on the outside door handle will allow you to lock and unlock the car. And that just makes it nice and simple that you can just keep this in your pocket and never have to touch them.

I'm going to throw them in the cup holder today and we're going to take a look at the gauges here first. Now first of all, these are typical Mazda gauges. We're going to zoom in just a tiny bit here as we were a wide angle before. This looks like a tachometer. It looks like a speedometer. And you've got your temperature and your fuel gauge right there. Now what's cool about the speedometer is it is actually a digital display screen and when you take a look, you can see that you get rid of that needle and you just have all kinds of information in here.

So a couple things that I really like. You've got your lane keep, lane follow or lane keeping and lane departure warning. You've got service due, you've got all kinds of things in there and you can also get rid of all that information and just have what you want in there which is just the speedometer. So I kind of like that it can disappear on you in there. The other thing I kind of like is remember we talked about that smart cruise control, so that intelligence, smart cruise control, whatever you want to call it, allows you to keep the distance between you and the vehicle in front of you and you have that right here on the wheel. And you have a small sporty wheel which is just sort of what Mazda does well, not a huge wheel. And again, this fits that sporty feel.

With all of that power you also have an all-wheel drive system. And what I really like about the all-wheel drive system is the all-wheel drive system has 27 sensors that this vehicle constantly monitors and allows you to put the power down. Now again, it's not designed purely for sport performance but that all-wheel drive system is designed for poor weather performance. So even though you've got all that power, you've got the ability to put it down. Like I said, 27 different sensors constantly being monitored, allows you to really get the traction you need in poor weather conditions. And that's part of what makes this car fun to drive and also what makes it sort of a safe, easy, simple to drive vehicle even in poor weather. Let's take a look at some of the controls down here that we've got to put that power down.

Pretty simple stuff here with your gear shift. One thing to note is compared to some vehicles, some vehicles, when you go to the manual shift mode, so you can again put it in drive here and tap it over this way and now you're in your manual shifting mode. You're going to get that out of the way. There's for a second, but when you do that minus is forward and plus is down something like Kia's and Hyundai's and some Japanese vehicles. It's the opposite way. So this one again, the idea is as you're accelerating, you're going to pull back. That's where gravity's pulling you anyways. So just one thing that's different there. So you can plus and minus might be different than some of your other vehicles. Actually I think the Jeep Wrangler does the same thing as this as well. It just depends on the vehicle. American, Japanese, Korean, they're all doing things a little differently.

The other thing is you have drive modes here, you have a sport mode. So again, the biggest thing the sport mode does is it makes it a little more peppy to drive changes sort of the shift points, that kind of thing. It is labeled in the dash, which we'll show you right over here like that, says sport mode and we can talk kick it out of there as well. But the other thing that you can do again, like we mentioned, is increase the octane. So put a higher premium fuel in your vehicle and you can have more power unlocked which is pretty cool. The other thing that Mazda does that virtually nobody else does in this class of vehicle is they give you this joystick type machine that also spins, that also does other things. There's your volume knob there because you'll notice there are no radio controls above the climate control there, it's just vents and a screen.

Now what I like about this is this is a touch screen. So you can use it as a touch screen which sometimes is just a little bit more intuitive for people. You just want to tap that button, you can tap that, you can hit the home screen for instance, if you want to. And you've got some nice things up here, but the software is laid out very well so that if I turn the dial down here, which I'm going to do right now, turn the dial like this, you'll see that I go to settings, to navigation which we'll talk about here and communication over here. One thing with the navigation tab on this car, I'm going to press it and select it. There is no navigation on this car, so that's kind of interesting that you have that display there regardless.

But you can go back there to choose other things using this joystick control. One thing I will say is you do have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and that allows you to have navigation through your cell phone, which sort of answers the call if you needed that. But there are a lot of good things in here. Let's just go to the entertainment type section here. Audio sources, we're going to select that for a second. AM, FM, Sirius Satellite Radio and all kinds of other things. We've got Apple CarPlay coming up there on the bottom. Android Auto is not listed right now just because it's unchecked as a option to display here. But you've got all kinds of options to play your music here which is good. And speaking of music, this is a Bose 10 speaker audio system. So you can see the Bose is labeled in the speaker there.

You have tweeters up on the A-pillars there as well. So nice little stereo sound system here. And again this joystick type control does give you a little bit cleaner look here. Let's just show you wide angle here and you have a nice sort of clean look to the dash. So again, sporty involved steering wheel, lots of controls that are easy to reach there including your wiper stocks that are right there, easy to reach, it's all good there. And then a clean look here with your climate system, climate controls down here. Now you'll notice I have your heated steering wheel on that is starting to warm up quite nicely now for my quite cold hands. The heated seat I did not turn on, so we'll turn that on. Three levels of seat heating is normal. So I used to call those rub roasters and I think I still will.

You've got a dual zone automatic climate control system here. So simple, easy to use. Passenger can just grab their handle here or grab that knob and switch to whatever temperature they want. But if they have it synced together like we do right now, I can move everything together from the driver's seat. Pretty standard stuff. One thing that not everybody expects in this car is you also have ventilated seats in the front two seating positions which is quite nice. So down here you also have a 12 volt port down there. That's not the only source of power in this vehicle. I'm going to go back to the seat heaters because like I said, it's cool. Going to come back here and try to show you the armrest here. So let's just show you the armrest by turning the camera. Might have to go wide angle but no, we're good.

All right, so down here, another 12 volt port right there and two USB ports. You can run the wires out the front here and keep them in the cup holder, keep everything there if you want or you can set it up in this container here. Not a massive area there, but again, enough to hold your electronics. The things that you would want to hold in there. Let's go wide angle for a second, just show you around the view of the car here. Contrasting stitching on that seat, even though it's a black exterior, have a brown-ish, tan-ish. Colors are not my strong point, but you can see that little bit of a contrast running through which contrast or kind of complements this fake-ish wood. Very plasticky feeling wood but it is a nice looking wood. And then again, you do have your sunroof up here. Now some vehicles are offering panoramic roofs, panoramic sunroofs.

You cannot get a panoramic sunroof in the MX-5. MX-5 is Miata in the CX-5, but you do have it up there as well. So you have a sunroof available to you. And this vehicle has your garage door opener, so that's your home link system. You can set up to three different garage doors to open there. Auto dimming mirror. So good features overall. And then the one thing that I haven't shown you yet is it's very hard to film, let's see if I can do it. There is your heads up display. So I'm looking out the windshield there and you can see the heads up display. So a lot of good information in there which means, like I said, you're looking at the road, that's exactly what a heads up display does. Windshield's a little dirty there, that's why you're seeing it smear out a little bit.

But you can see out ahead of you and have the speed out ahead of you, which I really like. And again, when you're taking a look at your dash in here, let's see if we can fix that flicker. You can really keep some more information here and then use your speedometer as the heads up display, which again, they don't film well. This is the closest to sort of how I see it. It's very clear and easy to read while you also have a clear view of the road. So a lot of sort of hidden features in here that not everybody sees. A couple other hidden features. Let's go down over to the side here. Again, things that people don't always show you. Hill descent control again, this is not an off-road vehicle, but... Oops, camera's going everywhere here on me. It's not an off-road vehicle but it does have that.

That's really nice for camping. You can set the height when it's a power tailgate so it doesn't open too far to hit the garage door. Lane keep, lane follow or lane keep and lane assist buttons there. You can just turn the whole system right off without having to go through the menu system. So lots of options there to control everything you want to control. One thing I didn't mention is the blind spot warning. So you have a little light in the mirror here that warns you if someone is in your blind spot or something's in your blind spot. The other thing that does and this is sort of class, everybody in the class has it. What I want to make sure I point out on this vehicle is when you have that blind spot warning, you have rear cross traffic alert. Rear cross traffic alert is to me pretty cool.

It uses the same hardware, so the same radar system that sees the traffic behind you here, it's a little radar piece right here, the plastic bumper that sees out behind you. When you have this car in reverse, if someone's crossing your path from behind, maybe you're only using the backup camera to see, maybe you have a minivan parked in front of the mirror here and you can't see this way but the back of the vehicle has cleared that minivan, it can see what's about to cross your path and warn you when you're backing up.So safety is very good in this car and to be fair, that's what you should get in this class. Safety is a really key piece. So if safety doesn't make this vehicle stand out because everybody's doing safety, who is this car for? Who should buy it? Well, first of all, styling. If you like the styling and I quite do, I really quite like it. It's sharp styling. It doesn't really stand out. It's not too super aggressive anymore.

When it came out it kind of really stood out in the class, but a lot of companies have upped their game. So styling, if you like it, it's very good. The paint is hard to show, but it's a nice metallic paint. Has a nice rich look in the sunshine which I'm not getting today. So that's another thing that Mazda does really well with their paints. But I think you should get this vehicle if you are someone who wants a little bit of versatility in the cargo area, that's that 40/20/40 split is not available in every smaller crossover. The biggest reason to get this vehicle is you still want something fun to drive. Maybe you're used to the sedan you used to have or a car that when I was younger, sporty cars didn't handle near as well as this.

And with that power, like I said, that 310 to 320 lb-ft of torque and again, all that horsepower depending on which fuel you use, is a lot of power with those 27 sensors putting it down to the all-wheel drive, you've got great handling in all year round weather and great power which makes this car surprisingly fun to drive, even though it kind of doesn't stand out sport wise, it's just kind of got normal looking wiggles, normal looking trim. It doesn't say a big, has a GT badge, but it doesn't have a big blazing thing like "Hey, this is the sport version." And like I said, all of that torque, it's more power than a lot of the pickup trucks we have on the lot right now that can tow 7,000 pounds and more. So great power in a vehicle that is kind of a sleeper on the road.

And if that's what you're looking for, this is a vehicle for you. So make sure you subscribe to that channel if you have questions, ask them below. And like I said, I can answer your comments in the comments section and I'll come back and answer them in future videos. And if you want to see this vehicle in person, swing by Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals here at Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada's huggable car dealer. The people here are absolutely amazing. They will take care of you. And what I like is we have all of these relatively new vehicles so you can shop new vehicle to new vehicle and your sales team can give you numbers that are equal on the same thing. They don't care which brand you buy, they just want to make sure that they help you find the vehicle that you want. It's a great place to be and I want to thank them for giving me access to their vehicles. Thanks everybody for watching.