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John
Simister test drives the new Mazda5
How many seats does a compact MPV need? Mercedes-Benz has stuck to five
for the new B-class, but Toyota stopped selling the five-seater Corolla
Verso in Europe because it perceived an urgent need for a seven-seater,
which it developed in record time. Or there’s the three-plus-three
approach of Fiat’s Multipla and Honda’s F-RV. You can argue
it any way you like, and Mazda has just poured fresh fuel on the fire.
Its new Mazda 5 is a six-plus-one seater, with three rows of two seats
and a fine piece of cleverness in row two. Meet the Karakuri seat, named
after the Japanese art of the unexpected. Normally there’s room
between the centre-row seats to allow easy communication with those in
the rear row, whose seats, incidentally, are full-size with proper space
for legs and heads. But you can hinge a centre armrest into position if
you like, or position it to form a backrest for a third, central seat.
But where’s the cushion? Hinge the left seat’s cushion forward
and all is revealed: a centre cushion stored upside down, which hinges
through 180 degrees to take up station in the middle. Or you can uncover
and back-flip an expandable storage basket from under the right seat instead.
The Mazda 5 is also unique in its class for its sliding rear side doors,
although these aren’t powered. ‘No demand,’ says Mazda,
a view which will interest PSA which has just launched the electric-door
1007. Underneath the surprisingly good-looking and un-van-like Mazda 5,
first seen at the 2004 Geneva show as the MX-Flexa concept, is a platform
based on that underpinning the Mazda 3 and, of course, the Ford Focus,
modified with a higher floor and a longer wheelbase. All engines, diesels
and gasoline units of 2.0 litres and a 1.8-litre gasoline engine, are
Mazda-sourced and the Mazda 5 is a refined but driver-pleasing drive.
And it features what is possibly a first, in Europe at least. When you
play a CD it records the data as MP3 files on a 20GB hard drive, so you
don’t need to insert the CD again. Brilliant.
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September 2005
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