2020 Mazda CX-5 Off-Road Test and Review

On today's episode, we test out the new trail mode on the 2020 Mazda CX-5. It's coming up right now on Driving Sports TV. In 2019, we took a look at the signature edition of the CX-5. It had some nice features, but we found the all-wheel drive performance lacking. Now, only a year later, this new 2020 CX-5 brings an official trail mode to the table. Is it enough to elevate this already pretty good compact crossover? Let's dig into it. The model we're testing today is the signature all-wheel drive. For 2020, it's the top trim. Prices you see it here, $38,925 including destination. Under the hood is a 2.5 liter Skyactiv-G dynamic pressure turbo four-cylinder. This puts out up to 250 horsepower and a staggering 320 pound-feet of torque when using premium fuel, making it one of the most powerful vehicles in the class. Fill it up with regular fuel, and it's still good for 227 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque. Signature models all come with Mazda's iACTIV all-wheel drive system connected through a The EPA rates this setup at 22 miles to the gallon in the city and 27 on the highway. A power liftgate reveals up to 30.9 cubic feet behind the second row. Handy pulls lower the seats for up to 59.6 cubic feet of total capacity. This is less than even the Honda CR-V that we reviewed last week. Under the floor is a spare tire and a Bose subwoofer. Second row, lots of space for my head, my knees, my feet. Get LED map lights up there, fold down the armrest, and you get a bonanza of extra stuff. Not just cup holders, but it also has seat warmers with three stages of heating and secret USB sockets. Now, the downside of having the USB here instead of down here where they traditionally are is that if you have three kids in the second row or you're using the pass-through, you won't have access to your power. That can be a problem in some situations. However, if you only have one or two kids and that's not going to be an issue, well, there you go. It's kind of a nice place to keep them safe so they don't get kicked. Boy, the leather in here is really nice. Okay, up front we continue with the leather. And what is that? Is that a wood applique? As you can see, Mazda is certainly aiming for the luxury market here. The driver's seat is nicely crafted with high-quality leather. It has 8-way power with lumbar adjustments. Plus, heating. Dual zone aircon is standard at this trim level. The steering wheel is wrapped in, oh, that is soft leather. I do like that. It also gets paddle shifters. In the middle, Mazda just couldn't help themselves, could they? They had to put the piano black here. And this stuff scratches so easy and this is a very high-use area. If they even just did a little insert of it, that would be one thing. But the entire thing is this highly scratchable reflective black. It's already looking like garbage, honestly, just from the few journalists that have driven this. That's not very good look. Down here, though, we do have a control for the nav system. Now when the nav system came out, I thought it was pretty cool, but I'm over it already, honestly. I don't care for the spinny discs. Everything just takes too many clicks to get done. Now, I can, if I have the parking brake engaged, I can use, oh, but it's not multi-touch, so I can't flick it. Anyway, I can use touch. I don't have to use the dial, but it doesn't really matter. Just the layout of it requires lots of clicks. Not a fan of that. However, it does finally support Apple CarPlay, which was a long time coming and is finally here. Plug that in and there we go. For 2021, Mazda has already announced its infotainment system is moving from the standard 8-inch, like you see here, to a 10.25-inch widescreen display. Hopefully, the upgraded system provides a more consistent user experience when switching between CarPlay and the built-in controls. Because this 2020 system is a usability mess. I mean, that's not multi-touch, that's just whatever. The built-in navigation does allow for voice commands, and it works pretty well, finding our standard search term rather quickly. Navigate to the nearest Starbucks. Say the desired line number. You can also say... This trim also comes loaded with advanced safety equipment, lane keep assist, traffic sign recognition, blind spot warning, parking sensors, and even a 360-degree camera view. Adaptive cruise control is included on all trim levels. Overall, this is a very nice-looking cabin. It's very dark, sophisticated, simple, yet nice touches of leather, metal, and plastic, and even some wood applique. So would something this fancy even, you know, would you ever even take it off-road? That doesn't matter, you know the show. Of course we're going to. But before we hit the mountains, we have some more tests to take care of. First, the gravel launch. With a full throttle start on loose gravel, the front wheels are dominant. But unlike last year's test, power seems a lot more controlled here. Here it is again with traction control disabled. As you note, yeah, it looks basically the same. Like all modern vehicles, this of course has adaptive cruise control. I'm going to go ahead and turn it on. I just click set. It sets the pace, and then I can set my distance using distance controllers right here. Once a vehicle moves out of the way, then it accelerates up to the target speed. So a lot of vehicles have been adding lane centering to their adaptive cruise control systems, and I would like to say that Mazda has done that, but they haven't. Nope, this just uses the same old lane detect, and it's going to try to bump me in and not do a very good job, and I'm just going to drift off into the forest. So yeah, you don't want to rely on that, that's for sure. As for overall comfort on the freeway, you know, it's kind of a mixed bag. The engine is amazing. This is a fantastic motor for highway cruising because it's got lots of power all across the range. However, the downside is the seats are firm. They're more firm than I really want. You know, Mazdas always drive great, and this vehicle is no exception. You're really looking at something that has fantastic handling, a lot of power, the transmission is really predictable. I mean, this is a solid six-speed automatic. It does what you want when you want it, and you can, of course, override it with battle shifters. Boom. Yes. This is a fun car to drive. It really is. The paddle shifters do feel a little cheap, though. There are these little plastic nibs in the back. I would like something a little more substantial, personally. The suspension on the CX-5 is stiffer than what you'll find from most other vehicles in the class. It is designed for the street and, you know, fun, peppy driving. It's not something that's really designed for harsh off-road conditions. It's just not going to have that smoothness that you really want, but we're going to take it off-road anyway because, hey, have you watched this show? It's kind of what we do. Let's try a 0-to-60. I'm going to come into a complete stop. Transmission is in sport mode. We're stop-stop. Three, two, one, and go. Boy, there's that big pause once the gas goes down. 30, 40, 50, and 60. Okay, that is a 6.86 seconds on the 0-to-60 and 2.51 seconds on the 0-to-30 brake. That's pretty good, and that was a slant of negative .7%, so that is effectively a level surface. Definitely one of the quickest crossovers that we've ever tested in this class, and I think that if you're looking for a little performance, this is a great choice. So the Mazda's all-wheel drive system is designed around a front-to-back transfer system that uses an electronically engaged center clutch. As such, it basically will put a lot of the power to the front most of the time and then send more power to the back if and when you need it. The big advancement they have for the 2020 model is they have the trail button down here, which, when engaged, will engage individual corner brakes to act like an e-locker. Basically it'll stop one of the wheels from spinning, which is bleeding out all the power from the open differential. When you block that down, that means the power has to go somewhere, which means it'll then go to the wheels that presumably have grip. As we've seen in some other vehicles, like especially the Mercedes-Benz GLE AMG 63S, it's very capable in theory. The application of it in every vehicle is a little different. Some are better than others. So let's see how well this vehicle does. See how fun this is? What? Ha! I can feel that power going to the back as I'm pushing in. I wonder what they've done to this system, because it definitely feels more aggressive setting that power to the back than the 2019 model did. Interesting. Okay, off-roading with 19s. This'll be fine. It's fine. The process of this test is basically I'm going to climb up this forest road, which is extremely rocky and is about a 20% grade. I'm going to not enable trail mode. Basically I'm going to go until I can't go any further, or it starts to have difficulty, and then I'll engage trail mode and see how that improves the situation. So I'm in drive. That's it. Let's go. Suspension is a little firm for this kind of stuff. Absolutely. Heads-up display doesn't do me any good. I can turn on a surround view camera. However, that is probably the lowest resolution camera I've seen in the past decade. It is really awful. Okay, right here I'm going to lift this wheel and that wheel. Okay, now we have no traction on two wheels. Let's see how this does. We're just spinning wheels. This is how the CX-5 was last year. Okay. Hmm. Tire smoke. Now let's go ahead and engage trail mode and see if that improves the situation. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Does trail mode actually improve things? Absolutely. However, we are on the trail, so let's see how it does with the rest of this, and we're going to keep it in trail mode. This doesn't have very good approach angles, and it only has seven and a half inches of ground clearance and no underbody protection. Listen for grinding as I slowly make it up the trail. Here come some ground clearance issues. I wonder how it's going to do here. And we're going to go into the ditch, I think. Here I have a choice of either going into the ditch on the right, which is more challenging, or to the left, which is easier. But the one on the left is like doing nothing. In the middle is a rock that is very close to ground clearance maximum, so I don't want to risk it. So we're going to go and go to the right and see how that does. That should lift the back wheel up a couple inches. Let's go up higher. There we go. Start getting that wheel lifted. Yeah, come on. Work it, work it, work it. Wow, it's doing a really good job with that e-differential function. Can you do it? Yeah, yeah. It's transmitting that power around. Well, okay, well, everything I said about the CX-5 last year, yeah, you can erase that. This all-wheel drive system actually works really well. They just needed to add that e-differential-like function, and now, now it's really good. Of course, you still have the issue of ground clearance, overhangs. Because this really isn't a vehicle designed for harsh trail roads. But if you ever find yourself in that position, or in snow, because this same functionality also benefits snow traction, then I think you've got a winner here. Let's see if it has a hill descent control program in this trail mode, because there's no individual buttons for, yeah, I don't see any individual buttons for hill descent control. So we're just going to see if it's built into this trail mode. So I'm going to stop, foot off the brake, and we're free rolling. Nope, nope, no hill descent function. Oh, well. And that's my look at the 2020 Mazda CX-5. It has been improved with a new trail mode that actually does make this much better. Of course, the camera system is still awful, and you still have issues with the overhangs and the ground clearance, but if most of your life driving is going to be on paved roads and every once in a while you want to go up a forest road, this is still a really good option because you're not going to get stuck, so long as you stay on, you know, reasonable trails. If you want something more extreme, then you probably want to look at something like the Subaru Forester or even the RAV4. I think it has, well, fact is it has better ground clearance and is just a better vehicle for this kind of stuff. But it's not as good on street as this vehicle. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe, give us a like, and share this video with your friends. Yeah. We'll see you again next week. I got this. Ha!