2014 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring AWD Long-Term Road Test

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2014 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring AWD Long-Term Road Test

A contributing factor to the Mazda CX-5's sporty personality is its automatic transmission.

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duck87

I think the ability to chose the 2.5L engine is more important, overall.

legacygt

I drive a CX-9 from 2009 and it has a very nice transmission too. It's a little quick to upshift but that's fine for the way I drive most of the time. It shifts smoothly and at the right time. It's not that quick to downshift which sounds like something they've improved with the auto in the CX-5.

Unrelated: I love the way the CX-5 looks but noticed something when I saw one parked the other day. My CX-9 is a Touring model so I don't have the foglights. I hate the way the blanks in the CX-9 are so blatant and serve as a regular reminder of the option you don't have. But when you get the CX-9 in GT trim the foglights look like they belong. On the CX-5 the car doesn't look any better with the foglights than without. The foglight blank is a sculpted shape while the foglights themselves are pretty basic and round. It looks like they came from another car.

netjunky

I find the manual shift mode a little backwards. Up shifts are by pushing down, and down shift is by pushing upward. Odd.

atomicblue

Netjunky, there's much debate about the the direction of manual shift modes on the varios car related forums. I like the way Mazda has done it - back to upshift and forward to downshift. The reason is physics. When you accelerate, you are pushed back into your seat. As you are being pushed backward, it's easier to pull back on the shifter to grab the next gear vs. trying to push against your momentum. The same us true of down shifting. As you are slowing, you're being pushed forward so pushing forward to get to the lower gear makes sense.

metalmania

I know this is an old post, but I'm catching up on the CX-5 long term so I'm reading through all the posts. I see comments on various sites about the correct and "intuitive" way to implement manual shift modes with the shift lever. Most often the pro journalists will say that basically only Mazda and BMW do it correctly - push forward to downshift and pull back to upshift. I wholly agree that this is the correct way. Why? Watch the in car cameras for almost any race car using a sequential transmission. I think every one I've ever seen is forward to downshift and back to upshift, whether it's Indy cars, GT cars, touring cars, they all do it that way. If you're trying to be an enthusiast brand, doing it the way the pro racers do seems "correct". This is how it works on my Mazda 6 and I never feel like it's awkward.