Weekend Athlete: 2008 Mazda5

For starters, yes, it’s a minivan. It has dual-sliding doors, which makes it marginally easier to load things from the side.

Since I don’t have kids or coach the local youth soccer team, I don’t know how easy it is to load tiny folks into the third row of seats. What I can say is that the third row flops over easily and, when that’s done, there’s plenty of room for gear to take four people camping.

Flopping the second-row seats, though, is a multi-step process. You flop the seat bottom up, then fold the seatback down. That’s OK, but putting it back up isn’t as nice. The biggest issue is that the lever to raise the seatback is parallel to the armrest – so a couple of times I’d grab the armrest, tug and … the seatback would go nowhere. Since I’m a guy, I’d tug the armrest again, only harder, and damn if that seatback wouldn’t move. Once you (ahem) grab the correct lever, things are much simpler. Still, there are better ways of doing this.

Fiddly seat actuation aside, the bike slides right in, either bars first or rear wheel first. There’s plenty of room for a 58-cm frame, and that’s probably why I see the Mazda5 so much at races. There’s a well between the second-row seats when they’re folded flat, but I actually kind of like it. It’d be a decent place to stuff a bag of post-race clothes or something.

The load floor is a nice height for shorter athletes, and for taller athletes Mazda put in a most considerate hatch lid; it raises to a lower height by default, but you can push it a couple inches higher to give you more clearance. I like that.

It’s a short vehicle that’s easy to park, and visibility is fantastic. I’d worry about its short wheelbase and tall dimensions on the highway on a windy day, but I didn’t have a chance to test it in those conditions, so I can’t knock points for that. It’s the type of car I like, and if they’d just fix the second-row seat setup it would push toward the top of my rating scale.

Weekend Athlete Scores (Out of 10)

Ease of loading gear: 9 — It’s a small car, but there’s plenty of room.

Ease of seat operation: 4.5 — Third row nice, second row not.

Bike hauling: 9 — Again, small on the outside, nice and big on the inside.

Locker-room cred: 7 — It’s a minivan, but it doesn’t scream “Mom wouldn’t let Dad take the cool car to the races!” the way others do. No faux-macho crap either.

All-around: 7.5