2026 Mazda CX-60 G25 Touring review

The Mazda CX-60 is something of a mystery. While just about everyone has downsized engines even in big SUVs, Mazda saw that no, a turbo six-cylinder mild-hybrid pair was the way to go, one in petrol and one in diesel. The company bucked its own trend, replacing a turbo 2.5-litre four with these big bangers.

I mean, lovely, right? BMW-like straight-six cachet, a good reason to charge more money in a car slightly larger than the smash-hit CX-5 to support pushing up and away from Chinese brands busy cutting Mazda’s long-held lunch. Perfect, right?

Not quite. The CX-60 is good, but a couple of dramas keep it from greatness. Mazda saw that it was good, wasn’t selling quickly enough, and thought the best thing to do was lop off a couple of cylinders, bin the turbo and go rear-wheel drive. Mostly to cut costs and therefore price. What does this mean for the CX-60, and is there enough of a reason to step up from a CX-5?

As is Mazda’s wont – and I’m not complaining – there are many variants of the CX-60, with a plethora of powertrains to choose from ranging from this, the venerable 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol, via the aforementioned mild-hybrid sixes and on to a petrol plug-in hybrid.

Pure, Evolve and Touring trims offer all four powertrains, while the GT and Azami lose the 2.5 petrol, meaning this Touring is the highest-spec 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol you can buy. And it’s yours for $57,707 drive-away, at least in NSW. This is not messing about, being a hefty $10,000 more than the Pure, with a smaller $2500 gap back to the Evolve.

As Drive colleague Kez uncovered in his drive of the Pure, the basic spec is quite thoughtful if not extravagant. The Touring starts with that car’s 18-inch wheels, auto LED headlights, rain-sensing wipers, replaces the cloth with leather, sticks with the 12.3-inch digital dash, eight-speaker stereo and 10.25-inch media screen.

The GT adds heated and powered front seats, powered tailgate, adaptive cruise control with traffic support, front cross-traffic alert (also in the Evolve) and driver monitoring. It also has a space-saver spare.

A good place to start is the Mazda website, which has pricing tools and a very good spec comparison to help you understand how much you’re paying and what you’re getting.

You’ll also be able to see if Mazda is running a current deal for the CX-60, as it was at the time of writing, with a 2025 plate clearance offer on the base-spec Pure.

You can check out a full range of CX-60s for sale on Drive Marketplace, with new and demonstrator CX-60 models for sale at dealers all over the country.

As the CX-60 range is a moving feast, as is the specification and rolling update schedule, you can keep an eye on things here.

At just over 4.7 metres, the CX-60 throws a big shadow. Until recently it was a usefully bigger footprint than the CX-5 but, er, well, that car is about to get bigger and here we are with one of the many conundrums Mazda has generated for itself and its SUV buyers.

But there is still plenty of cheer to be had for those looking for more room over Mazda’s best-known mid-sizer. It’s wider inside than the CX-5, with more elbow space meaning more real estate in the console for a shallow split-lid bin, a pair of cupholders and a wireless phone charger tray. There’s a lot more wriggle room – and this isn’t a metaphor – so it feels markedly bigger than a CX-5.

Physical climate controls are always welcome, and they’re well laid out with some nice metallic-looking buttons. The only markdown is that the LCD screen looks a smidge cheap, but it more than does the job, and I’m being picky.

There are two USB-C ports up front for charging additional devices, fast charging, or wired phone connectivity.

The black leather is fine if you’re into that sort of thing, but if you want something nice you must step up to the Azami and, by necessity, a six-cylinder or PHEV. The steering wheel is typical Mazda, which is to say lovely, but the shifter is the same weird one from the other CX-60s.

Moving to the rear you’ll find the CX-60’s party piece. It has a lot more leg room than the CX-5, and that alone is worth the jump to the larger car. I’m just under 180cm and fit very comfortably behind my driving position, with good head, knee and foot room and more shoulder room.

The fold-down armrest has two cupholders, the doors have bottle holders (as they do in the front), and two USB-C ports are available in the rear of the centre console, below the air vents. It’s a bit plasticky in parts of the second row, but not terribly so, although Mazda is curiously averse to splashes of colour to break up the grey.

And the boot is also usefully bigger than the CX-5, weighing in with 570 litres with the 40/20/40 split-fold rear seat in place. Drop them down and while you won’t have a genuinely flat load area, you will have 1726L of it to fill. It’s a good size and shape, although it suffers from lacking details like hooks, but there is a netted cubby on the left-hand side, a light and a cargo cover that lifts with the powered tailgate.

Mazda Connect presents very crisply on a 10.25-inch screen perched on the dash. It gets a little lost as the height to width ratio is on the low side, so it’s quite literally keeping a low profile. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are along for the ride to go with the wireless charging.

The screen is controlled for the most part by the large rotary dial on the console, as is the Mazda way. In some versions, you can use touch controls – but not this one.

That’s a double-edged sword, though – Android Auto and CarPlay are not built for a rotary dial, so the lack of distraction from taking your eyes off the road to find something to touch is made up for by wondering which app you’ve selected and how to move between screens.

DAB on the Mazda software is slightly annoying to scroll through too.

The 12.3-inch digital dashboard is lovely to look at and use, almost meaning it’s a shame there is a head-up display, which is also lovely to look at and use. Mazda turned me into a font guy a few years back when the CX-30’s consistent use of fonts in the then-new Mazda Connect made me realise how jangling it is when there are different fonts everywhere.

Weirdly, the CX-60 does not have MyMazda app integration yet, while the rest of the premium platform CXes do.

The CX-60 scored the maximum five-star safety rating in 2023 and this rating will expire in July 2028. The report was compiled before the introduction of the petrol 2.5, but covers both six-cylinder versions and the PHEV four-cylinder. So while there isn’t a specific rating for the non-PHEV four-cylinder, it’s extremely unlikely the CX-60 four-cylinder would be scored any differently.

It scored 91 per cent for adult occupant protection, 93 per cent for child occupant protection, 89 per cent for vulnerable road user protection, and 77 per cent for safety assist technology.

The CX-60 has six airbags, including a driver’s knee airbag and a front-centre airbag to help prevent head clashes in a side impact.

The Touring has a couple of extra bits above the Pure’s safety specification, including junction assist and a see-through function in the 360-degree cameras. Junction assist is very helpful, but I can’t say I found the see-through function especially compelling.

Over the week, the safety systems worked without fault or irritation, which is becoming a rare occurrence in an increasingly fatiguing market flooded with poorly calibrated safety systems, and some from brands that should know better.

Some may miss lane centring here in the CX-60, but I have never found that a feature to be of much concern, more of a nice-to-have on longer drives. Truth be told, it was nice not to have to fight the steering wheel.

Insurance came out at $1876 per year based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male driver living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

That seems okay for a car at this price and suggests reasonable repair costs. I’ve seen some absolute doozies in recent reviews, so this seems reasonable.

Mazda offers a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty with roadside assist for the duration. This is now pretty standard in a world where seven- and 10-year warranties exist, although the latter with caveats.

The CX-60 has a 12-month/15,000km service interval and Mazda’s capped-price servicing regime runs for seven years. If you’re interested in the first three years it will cost you $1359 or an average of $453 per year. The five-year figure is $2292 or $458.40, so no sudden scares along the way.

This is a fairly reasonable cost. Honda’s headline figure of $199 per service for the CR-V is tempered somewhat by the 10,000km interval, so if you’re a higher-miler, that’s a consideration. Toyota does roundly beat the Mazda figure at just under $300 per service for the first few years.

Part of the point of this CX-60 is to offer a more fuel-efficient alternative to the straight-six while not charging a PHEV premium. Again, this is an odd choice, because there’s a fair amount of chunk to this car to drag around with a naturally-aspirated four-cylinder. It’s more baffling considering the previous CX-9, a similarly heavy (albeit larger) vehicle, had the turbo four with its attendant torque advantage.

Mazda says you’ll get 7.5 litres per 100 kilometres, but I reckon that’s a moonshot. I got 10.4L/100km in a week that included a fairly decent split of city, highway and B-roadery. To get 7.5 I think you’d have to be driving so gently you’d fall asleep.

The bottom line is that while it isn’t particularly efficient, it does run on 91-octane petrol and is significantly cheaper to buy than the six, which doesn’t use a whole lot more fuel in my hands.

At its launch, two things conspired against the six-cylinder CX-60s. First was the really irritating transmission. A multi-clutch unit, it was hesitant and clunky and just an overall weird choice. I’m saying weird a lot in this review, and there’s good reason for that.

A baffling choice to go with the otherwise lovely engines, it took the shine off the idea that this was the upmarket-headed choice between cheaper Chinese competition and higher-priced Euros. One wonders why a ZF-derived eight-speed didn’t find its way into this platform, which would have saved Mazda a lot of time, money and effort.

Here in the four-pot G25, the transmission seemed slightly better. It was mostly smooth, mostly well behaved, and I didn’t have to think about it much, at least in traffic. I didn’t miss paddles and I didn’t get cranky at how manual shifting via the shifter is not a thing. It’s too fiddly.

The gearbox bared its faults when I went B-roading. There were two reasons for the back-roading: one to see how the transmission went, and the other for the suspension, which we’ll get to in a second.

This gearbox was not a willing conspirator on a winding, changing road, often finding itself in the wrong gear, as though it wasn’t reading the data being fed to it. Things improved a little in Sport mode – as it does more broadly – but it lost its composure, lurching down a gear or two… or even three… when the right foot found the carpet, sometimes in frustration.

Low-speed manoeuvring is also a bit tedious if the surface isn’t flat, so bear that in mind. The gearbox is better for general-purpose motoring, but it’s hard to keep up momentum in undulating terrain and overtaking on freeways is a leisurely pursuit.

The second thing conspiring against the CX-60 at launch was harsh and firm suspension. Mazda SUVs are very much at the pointy end of any segment at which they’re pitched, and the CX-5 was the benchmark for years before the Volkswagen Tiguan turned up. The two battled for that title ever since.

Early CX-60s crashed into potholes and generally rustled jimmies, whereas other Mazdas (or Tiguans or CR-Vs or any number of competitors) did not. The easygoing but dynamically excellent jinba ittai 'horse and rider' philosophy that dominates the company’s chassis direction seemed to be missing in action. It didn’t have the polish it needed to compete where it wanted to. Recent fettling – Mazda is not above dealing maturely with feedback and its cars are better for it – has seen an improvement.

It’s quiet, too, with the Yokohama Advans shipping with a 60-section sidewall to their 235 width, meaning a bit of extra compliance. It’s pretty impressive how Mazda can make such a big car look okay on 18-inch wheels with that much tyre, but here we are.

While still too firm for some tastes (not mine), the G25 felt good in the corners, turning in well, handling any messiness without fuss, and all while keeping the body reasonably flat after an initial shift with the car’s considerable weight. I grew to like it around town, too, feeling switched on in traffic that requires slaloming through slow-moving trucks and fareless, dawdling Uber drivers.

Rear-wheel drive is the key here, with steering unfettered by pesky driveshafts. And this is where the CX-60 four-cylinder sets itself apart from the upcoming, bigger CX-5.

While it’s hardly a big MX-5, the rear-wheel drive takes the sting out of how slow it is off the mark, and it makes me wonder how a good transmission like, say, ZF’s eight-speed, would properly finish this car. Maybe Mazda should consider rear-drive six-cylinder CX-60s as well?

If you’re looking for a heavy-duty towing machine, this is probably not the car for you. Coupled with an already marginal payload figure of just 425kg – five average-sized males aboard will leave you with little room to move – its rated braked towing capacity is 1800kg. The maximum towball download limit of 150kg means more reasons to fire up the calculator and make sure you’re keeping legal.

If you go all the way to the towball download limit, you’re left with a measly 275kg of payload.

The G25’s naturally aspirated four is not fireball material, either, with 250Nm to pull a gross combination mass of over 4000kg, already struggling with just a driver on board.

If you need a CX-60 with more pulling power, the PHEV and turbo petrol six max out at 2500kg of braked towing capacity while the diesel settles for 2000kg. Each of these cars enjoys at least another 100kg of payload, too, although share the meek 150kg towball load.

The CX-60 G25 Touring is a very nice car. It has a great interior, plenty of space and drives nicely most of the time. It is slow – sometimes painfully so – but for family and commuting duties in the suburbs, it’s fine. However, that’s where the fuel consumption rises considerably, as my colleague Kez also found in the entry-level Pure, seeing 15.5L/100km.

If your car is using that kind of fuel and not ripping off V8 Mustangs, you’re not really winning on the compromise.

It feels like the case for a G25-powered CX-60 is a narrow one – you need more space than a CX-5 (or a competitor), you can’t run to the more powerful versions for price reasons, and you spend most of your time on freeways. That feels like a niche to me. An even smaller niche than the original CX-60 was aiming for.

Is it a bad car? No, not even close. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.