Review: 2016 Mazda CX-9 Signature AWD – Part 2
This is the 2.5l turbocharged 4 cylinder engine that powers the Mazda CX-9. It’s Mazda’s first turbocharged engine with Skyactiv technology in it. Though I will not that Mazda has done turbo engines before with the Mazdaspeed variants of their cars (Does that mean that there’s going to be new Mazdaspeed product hitting showrooms soon? I asked Mazda Canada and they didn’t exactly go out of their way to say no. But they didn’t exactly go out of their way to say yes either. Read into that what you will). It puts out 227 horsepower and 310 pound feet of torque. But if you use premium instead of regular fuel, it puts out 250 horsepower. The torque remains the same.
Let me stop here and deal with the elephant in the room. This is a seven passenger SUV that doesn’t come with a V6 (or a V8 for that matter). That should be a #fail. Right? I’ll admit that up front, I was thinking “this is going to either surprise me, or this will really suck.”
It didn’t suck.
It won’t quite snap your neck back when you hit the go pedal, but there’s more than enough power here to keep you happy. This was true when I was the only occupant. But would it be true with more than one occupant? So, in the interest of science, I nominated myself to be the designated driver on pub night and took for adults home afterwards. The result? There was still more than enough here to deal with most situations. I was pretty impressed. So how did Mazda pull this off? Here’s my guess:
- The CX-9 has shaved about 150 kg’s versus the previous iteration
- The previous iteration of the CX-9 had a 3.7l V6 that had 270 pound feet of torque at 4250 RPM. For the record, it also had 273 horsepower as well. The engine in this CX-9 has the 310 pound feet of torque show up at 2200 RPM.
So what that means is that there’s more torque in the new version, and it shows up much earlier in the RPM range. That’s a big deal because torque and not horsepower is what gets your vehicle off the line. Thus it’s the number that you should care about when looking at a car or SUV. Plus the engine under the hood has to motivate less weight as well which helps with acceleration. Mazda engineers clearly got an “A” in physics class. But if Mazda wanted to make it perfect, here’s one thing I would suggest. If they could get that peak torque a bit lower in the rev range, the CX-9 would likely be a rocket. But I’m nit picking here. The average person will find little to fault here.
The power gets delivered to all four wheels via a six speed automatic with a sport mode (which by the way makes the CX-9 fun to drive) and an all wheel drive system that can throw all the torque to the front wheels or split it 50:50. It works transparently which is a good thing. In terms of handling, it’s feels very sporting which is surprising given that this is not a small vehicle. The suspension is firm and only the most severe bumps make it to your behind. There’s even a decent amount of road feel which surprised me as I don’t usually get that with a vehicle of this size. One other thing to note is that this is an amazing highway cruiser. If you road trip a lot, you’ll love the CX-9.
One thing that I have to say is the CX-9 is insanely quiet. Wind noise? No. Road noise? Didn’t really hear any. This was true at highway speeds or in the city. One thing that I should highlight is that when I picked up the CX-9 at Mazda HQ in Richmond Hill Ontario and started it for the first time, I could barely hear the engine start. I had to look at the tachometer to see if it was running. Clearly someone worked overtime to make the CX-9 one of the quietest vehicles that I’ve driven in at least three years.
Fuel economy? At present, I am getting 12.3 L / 100 KM’s in mostly stop and go driving. I’m okay with it so far. But it will be interesting to see how the fuel economy plays out over then next few days.
Tomorrow, I’m going to take a look at the interior. But I’ll give you a bit of a spoiler. It is stunning. Tune in tomorrow to find out why I say that.
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