Diesel road test: Mazda CX-7

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

To Mazda, a two-tonne baby…

If you listen hard enough, I’m sure you might catch the birth pains that regularly emanate from the design studios of the car industry. And the stranger the car, the louder the pain. Albeit not always a forceps delivery, one suspects that the arrival of any “sports crossover” produces more than enough gnashing of teeth. And the new CX-7 may well be a typical birth. Picture an RX-8 coupe blighted by histamine, the same flared-nostril physiognomy scaled up to Renault Espace proportions and you’re half way there. Compared to such messy complications as the confused face of a Honda CRV, this is a half-decent design, but the finished product begs one simple question: unless you set out for the showroom with the specific need of an Astra on steroids, why?

Find more on Diesel road test: Mazda CX-7