Video: 2013 Mazda CX-5

Mazda says the CX-5 is the first car to adopt its soul of motion styling theme from the Shinari concept. What that means is that you don't get quite as much of a smiling grill that we've seen on prior Mazdas. This grill is still sort of smiling, but it's deeper. It comes down a little bit more. The headlights are a little bit angrier. I think this is actually a good luck. We hope to see it on a few other Mazdas soon. Now this car we're in is an early prototype so a lot of these materials are subject to change, but I think that from an early look, this car might be a winner in terms of quality. There's a lot of nice low gloss, soft surfaces to touch. There's kind of satin sort of chrome going along the door handles and doors. There's piano black materials along the center controls. The CX-5 uses Mazda's new SKYACTIV four-cylinder engine family. But it's a small engine, so you need to keep the revs high to get much passing power. The CX-5 does have a smooth-shifting manual transmission and a pretty responsive automatic though which helps with that. Ride quality is good over big bumps, but the suspension can feel busy on rough patches of highway especially if you get the optional 19-inch wheels. There's just a lot that filters up into the cabin from down below. That said, the CX-5 is pretty quiet on the highway and the steering wheel feels settled and secure even at 70 or 80 miles per hour. Backseat room better than you'd expect for something with kind of this small of an outside package. I'm sitting back here. I'm about six feet tall and that's where I'd sit to drive. I've got a couple inches of a knee room left over here which is good. Also my knees aren't way up here, elevated uncomfortable. The backseat folds in our test car in a 40-20-40 split. What that means is that you can fold the outboard side. You can fold the middle seat itself down if you want and leave both outboard sides up and throw like a pair of skis or something through here. Pretty versatile. Usually not something you see until you get up to higher-end models. The downside is that the seats aren't adjustable. So you can't scoot them forward a few inches or backward to kind of open up more room in the cargo area or recline them. You can fold those seats using buttons in the seat backs or levers here in the cargo area. Again, pretty impressive that sort of versatility you don't usually get in this segment. Behind the second row, about 35 cubic feet of cargo space. Fold those seats down. You're looking at about 65 cubic feet of maximum space. Not bad again, considering how small this is. Small SUVs are selling pretty well these days, but the current Mazda Tribute, which is a clone of the Ford Escape as well as the current CX-7, haven't really been cutting it in the sales department. For every one of those two cars that Mazda sells, Ford sells more than six Escapes. The CX-5 should improve on Mazda's fortunes and Mazda says it plans to make it one of its major global core products so we'll have to wait and see how it does. <v Announcer>For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog, kickingtires.net.