Mazda CX-30 Skyactiv-X review: Skyactiv-X rated

Singapore

WE all know how this year's going, so maybe we should take any cause for celebration we can get. How's this for one: 2020 is Mazda's 100th anniversary (as a company rather than an actual carmaker, if you want to split hairs) so what better than a special edition car to mark the milestone? That car is the CX-30 Skyactiv-X 100th Anniversary.

Walk around it and you'll find special edition 100th Anniversary badging all over the car. The wheel hubs also carry the 100th anniversary logo, and the red leather seats have it embossed on the headrests.

Apart from that, it doesn't look too different from the standard CX-30 crossover we see on the roads now. If you're savvy about engineering, however, the little Skyactiv-X badge on the Mazda's rump ought to get your juices flowing.

It means the CX-30 is powered by Mazda's very unique 2.0-litre, four-cylinder high-compression engine. Through a combination of engineering smarts and high compression cylinders, the engine works mostly via compression ignition to burn fuel, which makes it like a diesel engine. Except it runs on petrol.

It's the first of its kind, and the result is a more efficient engine that's admirably economical in daily use. 177 horsepower from a 2.0-litre engine without the use of a turbo or supercharger is quite a feat.

It's also paired with Mazda's M Hybrid system, which makes the car a mild hybrid. A 24-volt lithium-ion battery is charged through regenerative braking, and powers the car's electrical systems to take some load off the engine.

Mild hybrid drive is becoming commonplace, but the Skyactiv-X technology is fiendishly hard to get right. Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, announced a dozen years ago that it was working on something similar, but somehow never brought a workable engine to market with the concept.

Still, Mazda is no stranger to innovation, and the Japanese car maker has a long history of launching cars with special engines going back to the Cosmo in 1965, a car so lovely and futuristic that it upstaged Ultraman himself in his own Japanese TV series.

Eurokars, the Mazda distributor here, says that only a "very limited number" of the CX-30 Skyactiv-X variants are available in Singapore and it expects to sell the full allocation, so if you want a piece of engine history, you'd best get in quick.

Special edition and engine credentials aside, the CX-30 is fundamentally a very well-built car that can give the usual luxury brands a good run for their money.

The cabin features plenty of soft-touch surfaces and the leather seats are of very high quality. It also lacks very little in terms of equipment. The CX-30 comes with a head-up display system, integrated satellite navigation and adaptive cruise control, plus lots of active safety features such as blind-spot and lane departure warning systems.

Much of that is the stuff of premium cars, but there's an intangible appeal to the CX-30's interior, too. It seems to fit like a set of tailored driving gloves, and Mazda's human-centric engineering is very evident. There's a compact, focused section around the driver and a spacious interior everywhere else.

It's the kind of car that somehow feels bigger inside than it looks from the outside, and that quality includes a large boot, which will certainly please shopaholics no end.

It might have the practicality of a crossover, but the CX-30 almost drives like a sports car, which is very much how the current Mazdas feel regardless of their size and shape.

The Skyactiv-X engine feeds a very smooth six-speed automatic transmission with power delivered to the front wheels. It's a very free revving unit, but feels especially gutsy in the lower half of its operating range, almost like it has a supercharger attached to it. In low speed urban traffic it's a pretty punchy car and feels faster than its 0 to 100km/h time of 9.1 seconds would suggest.

While it may not be all that fast in a long straight line sprint, show the CX-30 some corners and it all comes together. It's got G-Vectoring Control Plus, which is Mazda's version of torque vectoring control to help keep the car planted and accurate through corners, and like the best such systems you never really feel it doing its thing, but it makes you look like a really good driver through the curvy stuff.

Yet, at S$148,888 with Certificate Of Entitlement, the CX-30 Skyactiv-X is S$24,000 dearer than the standard CX-30. That's a sum worth pondering, especially since the world is filled with people willing to fawn over an established luxury nameplate, instead of engineers who can see the appeal of groundbreaking combustion technology.

The CX-30 also comes from a good-looking family. Mazda's MX-30 just won Design Car of the Year, a new prize in this year's Car of the Year Japan awards. Mazda itself also scored something of a coup recently, by unseating Toyota from the top spot of the Consumer Reports Auto Reliability survey in the US. Maybe not everyone is having a lousy 2020, after all.

Mazda CX-30 Skyactiv-X 100th Anniversary Edition

Engine 1,998cc, inline 4-cylinder Power 177hp at 6,000rpm Torque 224Nm at 3,000rpm Gearbox 6-speed automatic Top speed 204km/h 0-100km/h 9.1 seconds Fuel efficiency 5.8L/100km Price S$148,888 with COE Agent Eurokars Mazda Available Now