- The more and more I do car videos,

the more I'm surprised at what viewers wanna see.

In my height I thought,

"Well, everybody is gonna wanna see Ferraris,

"or just pure sports cars like the Chevy Corsica," but no.

Over and over again, this has been requested,

the Mazda CX-9.

(bang)

(quiet piano music)

(bang)

Believe it or not, the CX-9 is on the same architecture

as the CX-5 and the Mazda 3.

You would never guess because this thing looks immense.

It's wider, longer.

It's just more beefy.

Now when you talk about exteriors,

everybody has got a different opinion.

When you look at that, I almost got in a fist fight

over that grille with Turbowski.

Straight on, I think it's one of the best integrations

on any Mazda car, but when you get to the side,

it looks like you drove it into a wall,

and that's what he said.

And the more I look at the car from the side,

the more I feel the same way.

So let's talk about the front.

You have the LED accents in the headlights,

much like all the new modern Mazdas,

but you also have LED low beams and high beams,

which are a really nice touch.

The light output is excellent at night on this car.

Coming along the side of the CX-9,

this is where you start to see that up-sizing effect

that I spoke about earlier.

The lines work really well on this vehicle specifically.

It doesn't look awkward

like it does on some of the smaller cars.

One of my favorite parts

are these gunmetal-ish 20 inch wheels,

and yes, I know, the tires are gonna cost

a ridiculous amount for this car, but it looks so good here.

But where this falls apart,

and we talked about this in the shop, is this.

These plastic, non-painted panels all over the car,

and it just is a total distraction here.

And then on top of it,

they stick this chrome finishing accent on it,

and it just, you know what?

I actually would take this

and I would have a body shop paint all of it.

I just don't like it.

The back of the CX-9, I can just describe it

really in one way, and that is streamlined.

The lines are really clean.

There's just not an overuse of anything.

I'm not a huge fan of the chrome,

but the taillight design is compact,

the center lines are compact.

It just looks really clean and efficient.

Now unlike the CX-5, this has a power lift gate,

which is just like every other power lift gate.

It's way too slow.

You really don't have much manual control over it.

So for a vehicle like this, of course,

you're gonna have an electronic liftgate.

I couldn't see them doing a manual one.

It's just too big.

Here's what's good about the back end of the CX-9 is

everything is manual back here.

To flip down the seats,

the actual headrest goes down automatically

when you pull this lever and you push it down.

Now, pulling it back up is a little bit of a stretch,

and I'll be honest, I don't like it at all.

I have longer legs.

If you're really short,

this is probably gonna be a pain in the ass for you.

The second thing I don't like is these handles here,

these release handles.

They feel so cheap.

They feel like I could literally break them off

in probably a hundred times of pulling this,

especially if you're really reaching and in a hurry.

I don't know how they're gonna hold up,

but I'm just saying, try them out for yourself.

The next thing is, there is a ton of room

when you fold down all these seats.

Now the other negative here is

there is a huge gap in between,

and I noticed that right away

when I threw my tripod in the back.

It would always get stuck in between the seats,

and god, does it piss me off,

because I can't reach it from the back.

I have to go in the back door, dig it out, and pull it up.

And I can't move these seats back,

the frontal seats, to close that gap,

and I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing here,

but it's definitely something to note.

(dramatic tones)

So we are under the CX-9,

and what we've learned about this

is that for the most part, the architecture underneath

is shared with the CX-5 and the Mazda 3.

So a lot of all this has been reused.

Now in terms of suspension components, linkages, bushings,

tie rod ends, all that type of stuff

is all unique to the CX-9 and has been up-sized

because this is a much larger vehicle, but you can tell

with the frame structure and the sub-frame structure

how much room is in this suspension,

and the wheel wells on this

because they moved things outward.

And obviously it's nice,

because you can actually see in here for once.

The front part of the underbody is like identical

to the other Mazdas we've seen.

You have the front aerial panels,

all of this is covered up for air flow purposes.

There is strategically mounted drain holes

and holes all over the place.

- There are a very large amount of holes.

We should count 'em.

- It would probably take a week

to count all these holes under here.

But you're no stranger to counting holes, so.

We do have a service panel

to get to the oil drain cock and the filter.

- Why do they have two screw type fasteners here

and two push-in type fasteners here?

- I don't know.

- Why not just go all four of these,

'cause these are gonna break

or some yahoo is just gonna throw 'em out.

- Right.

- It's gonna fall off anyways.

- I don't like it.

Strut-based front suspension.

No adjustability for alignment aside from tow.

But something you noticed right away

that's different from the other Mazdas.

- What's that?

- The rubber isolators.

- Oh yes.

- Vibration dampers.

They have them strategically placed on this car.

You have one on the lower control arms,

and you noticed some other ones, too.

- [Scott] Two on the struts.

- Yeah, two on the actual struts themselves in the uprights.

Interesting.

And the actual wheel wells are coated

with a material to reduce road noise.

It's a felt-like fabric that reduces tire and wheel noise,

tire road noise, whatever.

So that's really about it on the front, Scott.

So as we get to the back and the middle of the vehicle,

this is an all-wheel drive model,

and I cannot believe they offer

a front wheel drive only for this

because of the torque output at low RPMs,

but these on-demand systems

in most all-wheel drive cars or SUVs of this type

are primarily front-wheel drive biased.

Now the drive shaft is always spinning while it's driving,

and this whole rear end is activated

via an electromagnetic clutch

which is controlled electronically.

So when the computer decides

that it needs to send power to the rear, (snaps fingers)

it sends voltage, locks that clutch,

and can slip the clutch as well

to send power to these rear wheels