One of the interesting asides in attending a car driving day is the random bits of knowledge you pick up along the way.
I was invited to attend the Mazda CX-80 event at Amber Lakes just off the M25 near Heathrow airport. I stopped to take some pictures in a lay-by on the complex before joining the public highway and noticed a display board on the edge of the lakeside.
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This informed that it was the location of a scene from the 007 James Bond film View to A Kill, where the dastardly villains Christopher Walken and Grace Jones tried to dispose of the drugged unconscious bodies of Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee in a Rolls Royce.
But I digress. The CX-80 is Mazda’s new flagship model and the latest from the Large Product Group, which includes the CX-60 and both models share the same longitudinal front engine rear wheel drive mechanical layout, with the added bonus that all CX-80’s are 4WD.
This seven-seater has had the wheelbase increased by 250mm to accommodate those third row of seats, with the middle row coming in a configuration of three-person bench seat or two captain’s chairs with walk through ability or the option also of fixed centre console. It also gets its own heating/cooling controls and USB ports.
There is a choice of two engines, and I am pleased to see that Mazda for one has not completely thrown the diesel engine in the dustbin, by offering a silky-smooth 6 cylinder engine of 3.3-litre capacity. This e-Skyactiv D mild hybrid (MHEV) produces 254PS and 550Nm of torque. The other option is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) with a 2.5-litre e-Skyactiv petrol engine with an EV range of 38 miles.
As someone who tows a caravan, I was interested to see that the towing limit of 2,500kg is the same for both engine types and would personally prefer the diesel engine, although this would be the more expensive option. On a like-for-like basis, the base Exclusive-Line model prices are £52,205 (diesel) and £49,670 (petrol).
All CX-80 models feature Mazda’s new eight-speed automatic transmission with Normal, Sport, Off-road and Towing mode, with PHEV having an additional EV mode and the CX-80 is the first Mazda to feature a trailer hitch view camera. Each mode sees the instrument display change to a different colour, and it did amuse me that for Towing/Off Road it turns brown!
The range encompasses five trim levels of Exclusive-Line, Homura, Takumi, Homura Plus and Takumi Plus, with prices starting at £49,670, to the range-topping Takumi Plus at £59,165. Two new colours have been added in Melting Copper and Artisan red.
Driving the CX-80 is a pleasure. The auto box handles the engine power well and the diesel goes about its business in a more refined way than the petrol PHEV.
My only gripe with the interior is that all the second and third row of seats do not completely fold flat for a level load space.
The interior is smart and well equipped and I like the heads up display and plenty of physical switchgear, rather than constant tapping of the 12in central screen.
Amazon Alexa in-car voice control can take over a lot of these functions for air con control, sat nav destination, music and weather etc. The equal-sized digital dashboard is clear and distinct.
The 360 degree view monitor with see-through view is a useful feature as it displays an image of front, side and rear and provides a display of the vehicle though it is transparent and is available as standard on Homura Plus and Takumi plus, and an option on others.
Safety features abound, with a plethora of airbags as standard. Lane keep assist, traffic sign recognition, blind spot monitoring are all included and making their debut on the CX-80 are cruising and traffic support, unresponsive driver support, smart brake support with new head-on collision mitigation and emergency lane keeping with new head-on traffic avoidance.
In addition, a new driver assistance system, the rear seat alert, notifies the driver of objects or passengers still in the rear seats when getting out of the car.
I experienced two of these while driving the CX-80: The head-on collision mitigation, when a car was parked close to a junction I turned right into, and driver attention alert, and both are useful bits of kit to have onboard.
2025 Mazda CX-80: gallery
