Video: 2016 Mazda CX-9 - First Look

And if some of the elements seem very subtle in terms of redesign while there's more than meets the eye, especially on the inside and under the hood, we'll explain. Now Mazda's design language, obviously alive and well on the new CX-9, which is about the same size as its predecessor. Check out these headlights, they kind of sweep into this massive forward-leaning grill here with a huge Mazda logo front and center. This actually houses some of the equipment for adaptive cruise control, Mazda says. Kind of an innovative way to do it because you keep it in here instead of housing it in the separate sort of blocky things in a lot of other cars. Check out these fog lights, you expect them to be kind of up here, but they actually tuck right into here. They're really, really small at the very, very lower corners of the car. Pretty cool. You get around back actually there's some similarities and back to the Mazda, MX-5 Miata, just in terms of the taillights, obviously it's all part of the same family. At the last CX-9 actually had pretty good cabin materials and it looks like its successor continues that onward. This is an auto show car. Mazda says it's an early, early prototype. So it isn't really letting anyone sit inside the car, but you can see a lot of the differences in here. Some very upscale touchpoints, real wood, real metal in this signature grade car here. There's an aluminum piece of trim here that kind of spans the entire dashboard, separates sort of upper and lower portions. Now Mazda's knob-based system here, multimedia system, controls the action appear on either a seven or eight inch screen, but the automaker won't say definitively whether the CX-9 will get things like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. As far as rear seats, there's a standard second row bench and a standard third row, two positions back there. So total seating capacity of seven. There are no captain's chairs option though, unfortunately. So if you really prefer to kind of stack your kids so that there's something in between them to keep them from fighting, not going to be able to do that in the CX-9. Under the hood and place of the V6, you usually find in these sorts of SUV's is a turbocharged four cylinder, good for 250 horsepower. Now Mazda says gas mileage, it expects to be about 20% better than the outgoing V6 CX-9. That means EPA combined numbers could be in the low to mid twenties. Very good for families. Stay tuned for more closer to the new CX-9's on sale date in spring of 2016. (car trunk slamming)