- The more and more I do car videos,

the more I'm surprised at what viewers wanna see.

In my height I thought,

"Well, everybody is gonna wanna see Ferraris,

"or just pure sports cars like the Chevy Corsica," but no.

Over and over again, this has been requested,

the Mazda CX-9.

(bang)

(quiet piano music)

(bang)

Believe it or not, the CX-9 is on the same architecture

as the CX-5 and the Mazda 3.

You would never guess because this thing looks immense.

It's wider, longer.

It's just more beefy.

Now when you talk about exteriors,

everybody has got a different opinion.

When you look at that, I almost got in a fist fight

over that grille with Turbowski.

Straight on, I think it's one of the best integrations

on any Mazda car, but when you get to the side,

it looks like you drove it into a wall,

and that's what he said.

And the more I look at the car from the side,

the more I feel the same way.

So let's talk about the front.

You have the LED accents in the headlights,

much like all the new modern Mazdas,

but you also have LED low beams and high beams,

which are a really nice touch.

The light output is excellent at night on this car.

Coming along the side of the CX-9,

this is where you start to see that up-sizing effect

that I spoke about earlier.

The lines work really well on this vehicle specifically.

It doesn't look awkward

like it does on some of the smaller cars.

One of my favorite parts

are these gunmetal-ish 20 inch wheels,

and yes, I know, the tires are gonna cost

a ridiculous amount for this car, but it looks so good here.

But where this falls apart,

and we talked about this in the shop, is this.

These plastic, non-painted panels all over the car,

and it just is a total distraction here.

And then on top of it,

they stick this chrome finishing accent on it,

and it just, you know what?

I actually would take this

and I would have a body shop paint all of it.

I just don't like it.

The back of the CX-9, I can just describe it

really in one way, and that is streamlined.

The lines are really clean.

There's just not an overuse of anything.

I'm not a huge fan of the chrome,

but the taillight design is compact,

the center lines are compact.

It just looks really clean and efficient.

Now unlike the CX-5, this has a power lift gate,

which is just like every other power lift gate.

It's way too slow.

You really don't have much manual control over it.

So for a vehicle like this, of course,

you're gonna have an electronic liftgate.

I couldn't see them doing a manual one.

It's just too big.

Here's what's good about the back end of the CX-9 is

everything is manual back here.

To flip down the seats,

the actual headrest goes down automatically

when you pull this lever and you push it down.

Now, pulling it back up is a little bit of a stretch,

and I'll be honest, I don't like it at all.

I have longer legs.

If you're really short,

this is probably gonna be a pain in the ass for you.

The second thing I don't like is these handles here,

these release handles.

They feel so cheap.

They feel like I could literally break them off

in probably a hundred times of pulling this,

especially if you're really reaching and in a hurry.

I don't know how they're gonna hold up,

but I'm just saying, try them out for yourself.

The next thing is, there is a ton of room

when you fold down all these seats.

Now the other negative here is

there is a huge gap in between,

and I noticed that right away

when I threw my tripod in the back.

It would always get stuck in between the seats,

and god, does it piss me off,

because I can't reach it from the back.

I have to go in the back door, dig it out, and pull it up.

And I can't move these seats back,

the frontal seats, to close that gap,

and I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing here,

but it's definitely something to note.

(dramatic tones)

So we are under the CX-9,

and what we've learned about this

is that for the most part, the architecture underneath

is shared with the CX-5 and the Mazda 3.

So a lot of all this has been reused.

Now in terms of suspension components, linkages, bushings,

tie rod ends, all that type of stuff

is all unique to the CX-9 and has been up-sized

because this is a much larger vehicle, but you can tell

with the frame structure and the sub-frame structure

how much room is in this suspension,

and the wheel wells on this

because they moved things outward.

And obviously it's nice,

because you can actually see in here for once.

The front part of the underbody is like identical

to the other Mazdas we've seen.

You have the front aerial panels,

all of this is covered up for air flow purposes.

There is strategically mounted drain holes

and holes all over the place.

- There are a very large amount of holes.

We should count 'em.

- It would probably take a week

to count all these holes under here.

But you're no stranger to counting holes, so.

We do have a service panel

to get to the oil drain cock and the filter.

- Why do they have two screw type fasteners here

and two push-in type fasteners here?

- I don't know.

- Why not just go all four of these,

'cause these are gonna break

or some yahoo is just gonna throw 'em out.

- Right.

- It's gonna fall off anyways.

- I don't like it.

Strut-based front suspension.

No adjustability for alignment aside from tow.

But something you noticed right away

that's different from the other Mazdas.

- What's that?

- The rubber isolators.

- Oh yes.

- Vibration dampers.

They have them strategically placed on this car.

You have one on the lower control arms,

and you noticed some other ones, too.

- [Scott] Two on the struts.

- Yeah, two on the actual struts themselves in the uprights.

Interesting.

And the actual wheel wells are coated

with a material to reduce road noise.

It's a felt-like fabric that reduces tire and wheel noise,

tire road noise, whatever.

So that's really about it on the front, Scott.

So as we get to the back and the middle of the vehicle,

this is an all-wheel drive model,

and I cannot believe they offer

a front wheel drive only for this

because of the torque output at low RPMs,

but these on-demand systems

in most all-wheel drive cars or SUVs of this type

are primarily front-wheel drive biased.

Now the drive shaft is always spinning while it's driving,

and this whole rear end is activated

via an electromagnetic clutch

which is controlled electronically.

So when the computer decides

that it needs to send power to the rear, (snaps fingers)

it sends voltage, locks that clutch,

and can slip the clutch as well

to send power to these rear wheels

to balance out the power split front to rear.

Now this is not any different than all the other systems

from Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, all of that, it's the same.

Now where Mazda differentiates

where they talk about this all the time

is their use of sensor data.

They wanna make this as proactive as possible,

which means it looks at ambient temperature.

It looks at steering angle sensors.

It looks at g-force, yaw rate,

so it knows if you're on a hill.

If you're on a hill, obviously,

it wants to send the power differently.

It knows when it's super cold out, potential snow,

when your windshield wipers are on, it knows when it's wet,

so it can always adjust the power before you get slippage.

It can react faster than you can.

So that's their big thing.

They spent a ton of time with that.

Now in terms of the actual drive train,

from talking to Dave, or I've emailed Dave some questions,

this is almost identical to the CX-5.

The differential is identical.

They haven't really up-sized it here.

Most everything is shared from the CX-5,

and actually in the CX-5 during the planning

they knew they were gonna build this,

so a lot of it is very similar.

(sighs)

This is the way of the future, bro.

- The big wheels and big grilles.

- Yep.

How much are these?

- 200 bucks.

What's the tread life?

- I didn't even look at that.

I was afraid to look at that.

- Pertinent information, 300.

- God.

Okay, so you're gonna pay,

for a really crumby set of tires on here,

about 165 is gonna be about the lowest you're gonna find.

These are 200 and you can go all the way up to about 289.

Winter tires are about 180 for this.

So it's something to note in terms of consumables,

and you'll probably get what,

two years out of these, three years?

- Depends on who's driving.

You're driving it, a year.

- Yeah, with all the torque in the front,

at least you can rotate 'em, 'cause I think

you're gonna be tearing up the fronts

if you're driving hard.

You said this hood is almost as long as that, what?

- 1963 Bonneville.

This is, what did I say?

48 inches from the metal to here.

That's 52.

- [Mark] The Bonneville is 52 and this is 48?

- [Scott] Yeah, and that has a proper engine

and a proper layout.

- What's not proper about this?

- Just look at it.

My God.

- Okay, so let's talk about this,

because this is a big deal.

A lot of people that are

huge Mazda fanatics or fans in general

have been waiting a long time for this 2.5 liter,

to have a car that makes some horsepower and torque,

so here it is.

- They should've built a V6

instead of did this to a four cylinder.

- They didn't want a V6.

That's why they built this,

is to avoid having to do V6s and V8s,

because they feel they can get

the same effect out of a turbo four as a V6,

have it more powerful and more efficient--

- And 10 times more complicated.