Mazda CX-80

Mazda's new flagship – a seven-seat SUV – arrives to challenge the likes of the Skoda Kodiaq The seven-seat follow up to Mazda’s CX-60 of 2022, the Mazda CX-80 is on the cusp of arrival in the UK. A formal press launch is planned for early 2025, but the company loaned us a pair of very-late-prototype, right-hand drive examples of the car - cars it described as '99-per-cent finished' - to see how they cope with UK motoring.Other than perhaps under the bonnet, this isn't a particularly unusual family SUV; although Mazda certainly has previous with those. Take the Pathfinder XV-1: a Series 1 Land Rover knock-off, only even more goggle-eyed, especially when painted Kermit green, as many were. In the 1960s, a tiny run of these 4x4s left a dedicated Mazda plant in what was then Burma, having been ordered by various government agencies. Even today some Mazda execs won’t believe the XV-1 really existed unless you show them a physical specimen; with its badges.If the XV-1 was at least functional, the Parkway 26 was the oddball motor show concept that made production. With a glasshouse to rival that of The Shard, the pretty-ish 26 was a three-tonne, 25-seat minibus hauled along by, of all things, a gutless two-rotor Wankel. To make anything like progress, the thing had to be so remorselessly caned that two 70-litre fuel tanks were needed to assuage its thirst. A good-old reciprocating engine of 1000cc was also called for if you wanted to power the air-con. Talk about a vicious cycle. Just 44 were made.All of which is to say that, for Mazda, developing a big-capacity diesel engine from scratch as it recently did, and then launching it into Europe amid the continent’s prevailing, puritanical anti-diesel sentiment, is a perfectly normal thing to do. The clever new mild-hybrid 3.3-litre straight six made its debut a year or two ago in the Mazda CX-60. That car was a mid-sized SUV with an interesting interior, quietly engaging handling and conspicuously poor ride quality, in thanks part to an over-damped back axle.We rather liked the engine, though: a lightly-stressed, thermally efficient, refined straight six with easy drivability and generous torque, given to work hard very willingly when called to.In the new CX-80, just as in the smaller car, it can be had as an alternative to a four-cylinder, petrol-electric PHEV model, which is intended to endear the car to fleets.  This is a seven-seater SUV designed to take on the likes of the Skoda Kodiaq and Hyundai Santa Fe, then, and has come in for some chassis tweaks to make it more refined on the move. Have they worked? Time to find out.