Mazda CX-60 2026 review | A premium-feeling Japanese SUV

What is the Mazda CX-60?

Unveiled in 2022, the Mazda CX-60 was Mazda’s first serious attempt to push itself properly upmarket and into the premium sector, rubbing shoulders with the Audi Q5, BMW X3, Mercedes-Benz GLC and others. A five-seat SUV loaded with useful technology, the CX-60 was also Mazda’s first plug-in hybrid and its most powerful model at the time of launch – accolades it now shares with the larger, seven-seat CX-80.

At first glance, you might wonder why Mazda builds cars with such large engines; the CX-60 is sold in both 2.5-litre plug-in hybrid petrol and 3.3-litre mild-hybrid diesel versions. However, Mazda’s approach for the last decade or more has leaned towards efficient, higher displacement engines rather than smaller units that potentially need to be worked harder (as found in plug-in hybrid rivals such as the Ford Kuga, Toyota RAV4 and Vauxhall Grandland).

Refreshed in 2025, the CX-60 remains a strong contender in the family SUV segment, even though its role as Mazda’s flagship came to an end with the launch of the bigger, more expensive CX-80.

How practical is it?

The CX-60 is a bigger car than many of its rivals, which translates into generous boot space. Kick your foot under the rear bumper to open the powered tailgate – a standard feature across the range – and you’re met with a large, square area that totals 570 litres. With the exception of the Ford Kuga, that is more cargo space than any of the CX-60’s plug-in hybrid (PHEV) competitors.

You also get 40:20:40 split-folding rear seats to give you more flexibility when carrying larger loads, plus there are catches either side of the load bay to make dropping the backrests even easier. What’s more, doing so leaves you with a long, flat, level load area and 1,726 litres of storage space – helped by seats that lie more or less flat. Plenty of SUVs have a step in the load floor, which makes filling up the boot with larger items a pain. A definite win for the CX-60, then.

Space in the rear seats is a bit less impressive. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still roomy enough: a couple of tall passengers will be perfectly comfortable thanks to generous headroom and legroom, while a third passenger can squeeze in for short journeys provided they’re happy to sit with their feet either side of a wide hump in the floor. Still, given the CX-60’s dimensions, you’d be forgiven for thinking there might be even more room inside.

Mazda offers a few options to dust the CX-60 with a little extra practicality. There’s a roof rack, for example, as well as a Thule roof box and a boot-mounted bicycle rack. You can purchase rubber boot and floor mats, too, which are generally a good shout in whatever car you own – assuming it is used year-round in British weather.

If you’re into towing, Mazda offers a retractable tow bar for both petrol and diesel versions of the CX-60. With a towing mode in the ‘Intelligent Drive Select System’ of all-wheel-drive cars, combined with a dedicated trailer stability system, you can haul up to 2,500kg. That’s impressive, and little wonder as the PHEV petrol serves up a whopping 500Nm of torque. The diesel powertrains provide either 450Nm or 550Nm.

What's it like to drive?

When running solely on electric power in the PHEV petrol (the official EV-only range is up to 39 miles from the 17.8kWh battery), you might expect the eerily silent experience provided by other PHEVs and fully electric cars. That’s not the case with the CX-60, though, as the electric motor emits a surprisingly loud whirr as it propels you around town. Things do settle down when you go faster, and the hybrid system usually manages to juggle petrol and electric power sources smoothly.

The standard eight-speed automatic transmission works fairly well, and you can make decent progress without having to work the engine too hard. When you give it a bootful of throttle, however, the four-cylinder petrol engine does become quite raucous. Doing so results in an impressive burst of acceleration, even if it isn’t quite as ‘electrifying’ as a 0-62mph time of 5.8 seconds suggests.

If you have visions of fast-charging your CX-60 PHEV, think again. The maximum charging speed it will accept is a 7.2kW AC connection, so the quickest you’ll get a 0-100 percent charge is around two hours and 20 minutes. A Type 2 charging cable for home wallbox chargers and public AC chargers is included with the car, as is a cable with a three-pin domestic socket for emergencies.

Alongside the all-wheel-drive, plug-in hybrid 2.5-litre petrol powertrain with 323bhp, there’s a six-cylinder, 3.3-litre mild-hybrid diesel with either 197bhp and rear-wheel drive, or 251bhp and all-wheel drive. These diesels will sprint to 62mph in 8.4 and 7.4 seconds respectively.

You might be a little surprised by the CX60’s dynamic demeanour. As a large SUV, you’d think it would do what such cars usually do and deliver a plush, somewhat wallowy ride. However, this large SUV is also a Mazda, and that isn’t generally the Mazda way. Instead, the suspension is quite firm: not to the point of being uncomfortable, but you do feel more of the surface beneath you than in many rivals. That firmness does at least give you a sense of connection with the road, along with good suppression of body-roll in corners. This, along with the plentiful grip and traction from the all-wheel-drive system, makes the CX-60 feel impressively agile for this kind of car.

Having said all that, one area Mazda tweaked as part of the CX-60’s 2025 refresh was its suspension. Leaving the engines alone, Mazda made minor changes to the front double wishbones with the aim of providing more steering response. Mazda also made the rear springs softer while stiffening the dampers and entirely removing the rear anti-roll bar. It recalibrated the stability control system, too. Although we haven’t driven the refreshed CX-60 yet, Mazda says the changes were made to improve both handling (increasing grip and stability) and comfort.

The steering, which is nice and weighty and delivers very detailed feedback, heightens the feeling of engagement with the car. Granted, the CX-60 does feel very heavy on the brakes, especially the PHEV, which weighs 1,995kg – compared to 1,832kg and 1,870kg for the rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive diesels – thanks in part to its 176kg battery. Yet it does avoid the wooden-feeling stop pedal that blights most other such cars. The PHEV also gets slightly larger front brakes than both the diesel versions.

What Mazda calls its e-Skyactiv X engine, a six-cylinder unit that will be available with rear-wheel drive only, will be coming to the CX-60 at some point. At the time of writing, however, it hasn’t joined the range.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

As you’d expect for a car that has been on sale for a number of years, the pricing and specification has changed over time. The starting price back in 2022 was just under £44,000; today, you will need nearly £47,000 to put a Mazda CX-60 on your driveway.

At least one point of potential equipment-related confusion has been mitigated, however, as the naming structure for Mazda’s trim levels has stayed pretty consistent – something plenty of car manufacturers don’t manage, which can make used car research a bit of a minefield. At launch, there were three grades: Exclusive-Line, Homura and Takumi. Now there are five: Exclusive-Line, Homura, Homura Plus, Takumi and Takumi Plus. We won’t go into every spec detail here, but we’ll do our best to lay out what you can expect from each one.

In 2022, the three trim levels were stacked one on top of the other, with Exclusive-Line at the bottom, followed by Homura and Takumi. Today, Exclusive-Line remains at the base followed by Homura and Homura plus. But Takumi and Takumi Plus are up and just off to the side, incorporating almost all of the same features in arguably a more aesthetically pleasing package.

Let’s start with Exclusive-Line. Even as the ‘entry’ trim on both pre-facelift and post-facelift cars, it makes the Mazda CX-60 look very well-equipped. The list of kit includes 18-inch alloy wheels, heated wing mirrors, LED headlights, leather upholstery, a heated steering wheel, heated front seats, keyless entry, a reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, cruise control, a head-up display and dual-zone climate control. There’s also a 12-3-inch digital instrument display and a 12.3-inch central media screen with DAB radio and navigation, plus wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity.

On early cars, Homura and Takumi versions then piled on the features. Homura added styling enhancements such as 20-inch alloy wheels and black wing mirrors, plus powered and ventilated front seats, heated outer rear seats and a 12-speaker Bose sound system. Takumi featured aesthetic enhancements such as 20-inch machined alloy wheels and a white leather interior. Watch out on pre-facelift cars, however, as radar cruise control was a cost-option at every level.

Both Homura and Takumi models also benefitted from a ‘Driver Personalisation System’, which asks you to input your height and then offers up recommended settings for your seat, steering wheel, head-up display and door mirrors. Once you’ve fine-tuned your position (we found the automatic system didn’t get very close to what we’d choose for ourselves), the system saves everything and uses facial recognition to apply them automatically every time you climb into the driver’s seat.

With the current Homura to Homura Plus and Takumi to Takumi Plus trim stack, things are a little different. Over Exclusive-Line, Homura brings 20-inch alloy wheels, black wing mirrors, powered and ventilated front seats, heated outer rear seats and the 12-speaker Bose audio system, as before. Homura Plus adds a 360-degree parking camera, adaptive LED headlights, a panoramic roof, radar cruise control, front cross-traffic alert (to stop you from turning across a lane if you fail to spot a car approaching), wireless phone charging and more.

Takumi builds on the Homura trim, adding 20-inch machined alloys and a white leather interior, as it did pre-facelift. But you also get white maple wood interior trim and a woven fabric dashboard panel with ‘Kakenui’ stitching, all of which looks fantastic and is a real selling point for Takumi cars. Takumi Plus then brings the same tech as Homura Plus, including the 360-degree camera, adaptive LED headlights, panoramic roof, radar cruise control and front cross-traffic alert.

Mazda CX-60 running costs

The official WLTP fuel economy tests may be more accurate than the old NEDC ones, but they’re still unrealistically flattering when it comes to plug-in hybrid cars. As a result, you might as well forget the CX-60 PHEV's official fuel economy of 201.8mpg. The figure you actually end up achieving depends entirely on how you use the car.

If you keep the battery charged and never use petrol power, you won’t burn a drop of fuel. If you never bother juicing up the battery, relying on petrol power the whole time, you’ll consume loads of extra fuel, as you’ll be lugging around the additional weight of the hybrid hardware while getting none of its benefits. Chances are your use will fall somewhere in between these two extremes, but always aim to start journeys with a charged battery if you can.

It’s the rear-wheel-drive diesel that is otherwise most efficient, managing 55.4-56.5mpg compared to the all-wheel-drive version’s 51.4-53.3mpg. With so few diesel cars on sale nowadays, it’s nice to have the option of one, especially if you will regularly take on longer journeys.

Those who stand to save most from choosing the CX-60 over a more conventional petrol or diesel car, though, are company car drivers. The plug-in hybrid drivetrain means you’ll pay vastly reduced benefit-in-kind tax, leading to huge savings both in the short- and long term. Having said that, if a fully electric car fits into your motoring life, choosing one of those over a CX-60 PHEV will save you even more as a company car.

Mazda CX-60 reliability

When it was launched the CX-60 was an entirely new car, built on an all-new architecture. Perhaps it won’t come as a surprise, then, that it had a few issues. Evidence of this can be found in the 2025 What Car? Reliability Survey, where Mazda claimed 15th place overall out of 30 manufacturers, but the CX-60 was the third least reliable family SUV. Out of 76 cars, it was placed 74th, ahead only of the 2016-2021 Kia Sportage and the 2024-present Volkswagen Tiguan.

Mazda offers a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty with the CX-60, which is about the bare minimum any new car buyer can expect these days. Many rival manufacturers, such as Kia and Hyundai, are certainly more generous on that score.

Mazda offers service plans as part of any new car purchase, and you can also purchase an extended warranty. These are priced on an individual basis, depending on the car and driver.