2.0 Takuya 5dr Hatchback

Good car, let down by weak performance and poor interior touches.

Bought this car 18 months ago from a Mazda dealer. The car was a year old with 22000 miles and one private owner under its belt. I have added a further 22000 miles in the time I have owned the car.

The car looks fantastic, looks better then all of its rivals. The Takuya specification comes with 18 inch wheels, twin exhaust pipes, and a boot spoiler. These all add up to make the car look quite sporty

Inside, the interior is well screwed together but in typical Japanese car style with hard scratchy plastics. The dash has developed a few rattles and the heated seat controls at the bottom look very cheap and nasty and were clearly an afterthought. The rest of the dash and controls are well laid out and fall easily to hand. The boot is huge, and there is plenty of interior space. The car seats four or five in comfort.

As far as the drive is concerned, it is a mixed bag. The handling is superb for a large fwd car and it can be thrown around with surprising agility. The six speed gearbox is very slick and precise. The car has around 150bhp, though due to its size, performance is quite poor. Acceleration isn't great and the newer generation of small capacity turbo cars leave it standing. Also it struggles to keep up with motorway traffic, requiring downshifts to keep pace. The car returns around 30mpg in town driving and 37-38mpg on motorway runs.

Overall, it is a refined and comfortable cruiser that can also be fun on A and B roads. It is just let down by some interior issues and poor performance.

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