The IT Nerd

The interior of the the Mazda CX-5 GT AWD is all new for the 2016 model year. In my opinion, they got almost everything right. What did they miss? I’ll get to that in a second.

The driver’s seat is power adjustable (8 ways) and very comfortable. Both front seats are made of leather and are heated.

Mirror, door locks and window controls are on the door.

Audio is provided by Bose and it sounds great.

Controls to disable the electronic overseers are on the left side of the steering wheel. The cubby below it is handy. You’ll also note below the pedals which includes a dead pedal.

The gauge cluster that is clear in most lighting conditions and provides you with a ton of info that you can customize.

The steering wheel is leather wrapped and feels nice in my hands. It has controls for the infotainment and cruse control. Strangely, it’s not heated.

The shifter is leather wrapped and to the left is the Sport Mode switch. Below that is the electronic parking brake. To the right of that is the HMI (Human Machine Interface) Commander Switch for the infotainment system.

The cupholders are great. They’ll hold pretty much anything…..

Including my Venti Starbucks coffee. The cubby below the cupholder is a great idea.

The armrest has a huge amount of storage as well as a coin shelf.

You also get a pair of USB ports as well as an AUX port for audio. That panel to the left has the SD card that contains the maps for the navigation system.

The 2015 model of the CX-5 had a 5.8″ touchscreen with buttons around it. It’s been replaced by a 7″ touchscreen that is much better. HVAC controls are below the touchscreen.

You get a decent sized glovebox.

You get a good sized moonroof that doesn’t cut into your headroom.

The back seat is roomy. Three adults will fit in a pinch.

If you don’t need to seat three people, you can use these cupholders.

Or you can take advantage of the 40-20-40 seats for longer items. One plus is that they can be flipped down remotely from the cargo area in the GT trim level.

There’s a whole lot of space in the cargo area as evidenced by my trip to the beer store and for groceries. 

You get a 12V outlet in the cargo area.

You get a handle to close the manual lift gate without getting dirt on your hands. My wife was the one that pointed out the fact that the lift gate was manual as she found it odd that there was no power lift gate and others in this class have one. I have to agree that Mazda might have missed the mark on that one.

All the surfaces that you touch are soft. Plus the fit and finish is excellent. Everything that the driver could possibly need falls easily to hand as well. In short, everything interior wise is well thought through. The new interior of the 2016 Mazda CX-5 GT AWD for the most part is a winner. Add a power lift gate and a heated steering wheel and it would be perfect.

In part four of this review, I will cover the technology in the car. And there’s a lot of it to cover. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on March 25, 2015 at 6:57 am and is filed under Products with tags Mazda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.