Mazda's MPV would make a decent day-home

Being stylish can date a car, being handsome makes it dateless. And that’s the option Mazda took with their latest full-sized MPV, a vehicle that will bring it for a fair few years into this new millennium.

Mind you, it’s unmistakably a Mazda, with the current corporate grille pushing the image boldly forward above the integrated bumper/airdam. And they didn’t bother looking for a pretty name, either. The ‘MPV’ is what it is, and that’s what they called it. In case you didn’t notice, they make a big badge of it on the back.

The body proportions may seem at first glance to be a little on the heavy side, but only for a moment. The subtle shapes sculpted into what is essentially a slab-sided design take away from just that, and there’s a ‘style of strength’ built into the whole look. The back door has its own gentle curves too, but not too much so as to get in the way of heads or ferried hatstands. God big light clusters and a gentle dip in the back window shape also ease the metal visual load. The whole car is topped off with roof rails, ideal and one friend figured, for tying the fishing rods to.

Opening the doors says one thing immediately - there’s no stinting in the soundproofing here, all too common these days from Asian offerings, and there’s a distinctly Mercedes-Benz level feel to things. So also in the furniture, with the velour seat material in the review car being of very high quality and good luxury. Comfort follows, of course.

So did the plastics choices in the MPV, which seemed to me to be of a significantly better better kind than in many cars even at this price level. Along with thoughtful and tasteful detailing of switchgear (particularly good in the big knob for handling the radio volume), there’s no denying that Mazda has aimed to provide a little extra to gain its share of this fast-growing market segment.

It’s a seven-seater, like most of its competitors, and the company makes the usual noises and demonstrations of the ‘flexibility’ of occupancy which defines the large MPV. All that said, of course, you have to remove seats to get much of that flexibility, and nobody seems to have yet come up in this size with the excellent foldaway arrangement pioneered by Opel in its Zafira. (They’re working on it, though, as Mazda’s majority shareholder and effective owner Ford is working out something similar for the compact MPV version of the Focus. We can assume the Galaxie next generation will have it too, and probably future versions of MPV.)

The way MPVs are used also mean storage for bits and bobs are essential, and the Mazda model comes with plenty, though I wasn’t really impressed with the capacity of the basic glovebox: gloves are probably all it will hold if you leave the handbook in there. But there ARE bottle holders in the doors, cupholders for pretty well everyone, a good drawer under the front passenger's seat, and a covered well in the rear to pop flattish things out of the way.

Access for people is reasonably good, thanks to sliding rear doors on each side. But getting from there into the very back seemed a little awkward - I found the best way was through the back door itself, with a gap between the two seats making entry and egress possible, if not decorous.

That said, there was ample head, leg and shoulder room in all seats even for me, so this is a real seven-seater if that’s what’s needed. If four people are the normal load, I’d be inclined to remove the three in the middle, and you have real limo stretchroom, as well as a handy area to carry bulky parcels. Like all these, the room behind the rearmost seats isn’t great, though I fancied the MPV has a little more than many.

The luxury feel continues when you fire up the 2-litre 122bhp: there’s little noise from up front, and moving along the road also remains a quiet exercise. There’s a little twisty road from Johnstown to Sallins in my home county of Kildare, which has hills and turns and a surface that in charity can only be called ‘uneven’, and if we’re going to have noise or handling problems, this is where they’re going to show. They didn’t, and the gliding ride was unperturbed. The driving position is also very comfortable, and cross-country motoring in indifferent conditions is no chore at all. Odd thing, though, it took me a little while to get used to the position of the gearshift - seemed to be a little back from where my hand expected it to be.

There seemed to be adequate power, even when I loaded up with a bunch of beaglers at the weekend. It’s not going to burn rubber, but then this is a family bus or touring holiday day-home, so that’s not the point. Keeping passengers from becoming ill-tempered or tired is what we’re about, and with the ample glass area, they’ll be able to distract themselves watching the countryside from a high vantage.

MPVs at full size can be a compromise for your driving needs, being not quite a car for the daily commute and city parking, and not tough enough in fabric terms to be used as a workaday van. But Mazda’s MPV really DOES drive and feel like a car, albeit a large one. That’s OK, I like large, and I didn’t find it in any way unwieldy or a bit of a squeeze to manoeuvre. Except when I met a JCB on that above-mentioned road ... I HATE the unnerving way those things wallow and weave towards one.

I’ve often thought of setting one of these up as a mobile office and doing my work from various parts of the country and even the continent. If I was to do so, I think the Mazda MPV would be high on my shopping list.

Mazda MPV facts: 2-litre engine; 5-speed manual or 4-speed auto; price range £27,825.

- by Brian Byrne.