Video: 2015 Mazda CX-9 Review

But part of that reason is that this is the ninth model year for the current CX-9 without a big redesign. That's crazy old for any car. So let's see if this one still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Now for such an old car, the CX-9's interior has actually aged pretty well. Big center stack here. Kind of waterfalls into this tunnel right here and bisects a very traditional looking dashboard. Pretty high end leather in this car actually. Leather is standard and most trim levels of the CX-9. Very well padded, very well cushioned seats here. Lots of padding where your arms and your elbows fall. The leather itself, I wouldn't be surprised to find the same grade of stuff in a luxury model. Now, a few ergonomic issues. The window controls for shorter drivers, they might find that they're a little bit of a reach, kind of far away here. And the center controls here, although there are a lot of very convenient knobs to dial and shortcut buttons here for the navigation system, they surround a navigation system that seems kind of antiquated. It's a Tom Tom unit here in the CX-9, and it just requires a lot of intermediary steps between things like zooming in and out along the map, scrolling the map, waiting for the map to kind of repopulate itself. Another small issue we have, storage space. Not a ton of it here, especially for a very large SUV. Very modest sized glove compartment. Center console here. It's got some space, but not as much as a lot of competitors have. Again, for a three row big SUV, very family-friendly SUV, not a lot of family-friendly storage space. Second row space kind of low to the floor here, but decent head room and leg room. The seat moves forward a number of inches here, and that really does allow adults in the second and third row, if you've got to have them, to kind of be able to negotiate decent space between the two. That third row actually has pretty good cushioning. Not something you often find in a lot of third row SUVs, but as you can see here, pretty narrow pass through. Even when you have the seat all the way forward with this kind of walk-in feature here, not the absolute simplest to get into. And usually you can just have kids kind of come between if you have captain's chairs in a setup with a center aisle. Something the CX-9, unfortunately, does not offer. About 100 cubic feet of maximum cargo room in the CX-9, which is competitive. But getting to that whole setup, like you see on the right-hand side here, a little bit of a struggle. You got to do a couple of steps here to fold down the third row. As you can see, when the second row is all the way back with its default backrest angle, the third row doesn't quite easily fall into the ground there, which means you got to come around to the second row. Now, move it a few clicks forward. Now you get the third row to finally fall down. But in most situations, when you try to then fold the second row down, it doesn't want to go down either. So you've got to move it back and fold it to finally have the setup you have here. Even when you do that, there's a little bit of a gap here as well between the second and the third rows. That can kind of catch and hide some of the cargo you're trying to put in. Now in terms of driving, the CX-9 really establishes itself as a sportier player in the segment. Ride quality, a little bit on the busy side, and steering has less power assist than you'd expect in a big SUV. So it takes more effort to steer kind of at parking lot speeds, but really rewards you with pretty good precision at higher speeds. Big V6 engine is standard, but the six speed automatic transmission kind of has really long gearing. That means it just takes longer to kind of wind out in third gear, fourth gear, those highway passing situations where it needs to kick down. I'd like to see shorter gearing, but that might hurt gas mileage even more. And it's already behind a number of competitors to the CX-9. Another issue, crash test ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a number of problem areas for this vehicle. Now there is some good DNA in the current generation. Things like comfortable seats and a history recently of good reliability. But I gotta say, it's time sooner rather than later, for Mazda to issue a redesign. (upbeat music) (engine revving)