2024 Mazda CX-90 _ Mixed Feelings

**A Detailed Review of the Mazda CX-90: A Unique Driving Experience**

As I sat down to write this review, I couldn't help but think about the immense amount of time and effort that went into creating the Mazda CX-90. It's a vehicle that's been months in the making, and one that's left me with a sense of intrigue and curiosity. As someone who's always been passionate about cars, I was excited to get behind the wheel of this three-row SUV and see what it had to offer.

**A Mixed Bag: The CX-90's Driving Experience**

As I drove the CX-90, I couldn't help but feel a sense of mixed emotions. On one hand, I was impressed by Mazda's commitment to creating a driving experience that's both unique and engaging. They've clearly taken a different approach to designing this vehicle, one that prioritizes driving enjoyment over sheer comfort and practicality. This is evident in the way the car handles, which feels more agile and responsive than many of its competitors.

**The Pilot: A Front-Wheel Drive Powerhouse**

One of the cars I tested alongside the CX-90 was the Toyota Pilot, a front-wheel drive SUV that's been around for years. Despite its architecture, the Pilot still manages to ride softly and feel nimble under most driving conditions. This is no doubt due to its clever torque vectoring rear differential, which helps to improve traction and stability. However, as I drove both cars, I couldn't help but feel that the CX-90's approach was more effective in terms of providing a sense of engagement and connection.

**The MDX: A Comparable Alternative**

Another car I tested was the Honda MDX, a vehicle that shares many similarities with the CX-90. Both SUVs are designed for comfort and practicality, with a focus on hauling and towing. However, as I drove both cars, I couldn't help but feel that the MDX was slightly more impressive in terms of its overall driving experience. The MDX's smooth transmission and responsive steering made it feel like a joy to drive, even if it didn't quite match the CX-90's sense of engagement.

**The Inline 6: A Performance Version with a Few Quirks**

One of the most interesting aspects of the CX-90 is its inline 6 performance version, which I had the chance to test. This car is clearly built for speed and performance, with a powerful engine that delivers impressive acceleration and responsiveness. However, as I drove it, I couldn't help but notice a few quirks that detracted from the overall experience. Specifically, there was an excessive amount of vibration present in the drive line, which made it feel like the car was working harder than it needed to.

**A Focus on Driving Enjoyment: The CX-90's Philosophy**

At its core, Mazda's philosophy with the CX-90 is one of driving enjoyment and connection. They're not trying to create a comfortable, practical SUV that checks all the right boxes; instead, they're focused on creating a vehicle that inspires joy and excitement behind the wheel. This approach is clearly evident in the way the car handles, which feels more agile and responsive than many of its competitors.

**A Special Experience: The CX-90's Unique Charm**

As I sat down to write this review, I couldn't help but feel that the Mazda CX-90 was a truly special vehicle. Its unique approach to driving experience has left me with a sense of intrigue and curiosity, and I'm excited to see how it will fare in the long term. While it may not be perfect – and there are certainly areas where it falls short – the CX-90's commitment to creating a driving experience that's both engaging and enjoyable is something to be commended.

**A Look to the Future: Mazda's Next Steps**

As I look to the future, I'm excited to see how Mazda will continue to evolve this platform. What improvements can they make? How will they address some of the quirks and issues that we've identified in this review? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain – the Mazda CX-90 is a vehicle that's left an indelible mark on my psyche, and I'm eager to see what the future holds for this innovative SUV.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe Mazda cx90 a new direction for this brand in this video you're going to see an hour's worth of content from interviews with the designers the engineers to help explain the ideology behind what this vehicle is and where they're going in the future Mazda had pushed the front-wheel drive architecture to the absolute limits of trying to make it feel more upscale and they hit a wall and they had to create a rear wheeel drive platform that was similar to something you see in luxury Brands like BMW and Mercedes but the cx90 and its future iterations are all built in a price point where most of normal people could afford starting around 40,000 and moving upward so they're trying to bring a lot of that into this Japanese formula that they've been great at and out of the five years of doing this I've had more messages and and emails from people asking where this video was and why it hasn't been released and I'm going to tell you right front this was a very very difficult video for me to put together every time I went to go edit it I just shelved it and a lot of it was because there was a lot of content and a lot of it was because we went through two different press cars where Jack and I were left with questions of is this normal is this right is this what they set up to do and over the course of making this video I've had to go through re-shoot and all of that which is not a good sign but I'm going to do my best not to throw the brand under the bus I want to be very objective about about what it is and what it's not the good and the bad because when you create something like this new and there's so much energy and money put into it I I think they were in the right direction for a majority of this but there's some things that they probably can improve and I want to be fair to the viewers and I want to be fair to them as a brand so I feel like my hands are tied in a way of trying to trying to assemble this video but first let's hear a little bit about what the cx90 in this generation vehicle is I am MIT and I am the program manager sh90 I have worked for master for about 34 years and uh originally I was body engineering engineer and then I was in South California to work for North American operation and to understand our us Target customers uh needs and the batteries this is probably my last outcome outcome of my Master's career so I just wanted to realize the best product in the master history so I'm John Leverett uh launch strategy manager for Mazda so planning the overarching product strategy um before it reaches kind of the other departments well we knew um from CX9 that some of the things that we needed to prioritize were space uh you know CX9 as great of a product as it is we know that it's a little small um so when planning a new product we knew that we wanted a larger size um but we also knew that we needed to keep the Mazda driving Dynamics um and keep the things that our customers love um they're kind of our brand identity items like performance uh ride and handling things like that so uh if you're going to if you're going to add more size uh how can we do that and keep those handling aspects and that's kind of how we arrived at that rear wheeel drive platform with an inline 6 engine yeah so obviously with a higher price comes expected content um and not only did we you know want to add things like ventilated rear seats which starts to become an expectation now heated rear seats um a panoramic sunroof those things are expected and then just some more luxury touch items like a Power Tilt and telescopic steering wheel you know it's the first time we've had that feature probably since like the Millennia in n in the '90s you know so uh just some features like that that that are uh certainly Elevate the product to kind of that luxury standard one of the big things that Mazda has done great in this generation starting with the Mazda 3 and the cx30 and then of course the MX is material Choice the interior design for the price point is really really special and the cx90 attempts to do that on another level because they want to go and make this the flagship vehicle for their brand despite it being a three row so when you look at the center plane the dash the stitching the material Choice depending on what trim level you get and of course the interior color selection there is a a sense of clarity and their vision of making it very clean Mazda likee purposeful and not making it cheesy we see this with a lot of luxury Brands where they will throw the kitchen sink at you in terms of odd material choices and screens and all this in it it really winds up after you get get over it it's just a bunch of gimmicks where this feels more classically designed physical more tangible and the cx90 does a really good job with it I'll be honest when you look at this for like 50 60 Grand you know and you look at some of the other commodity brands that are doing it this this definitely is on they're on the right path now when you look at the entire style of this you could see that it's just got a classic Mazda design but it looks so long and so Sleek for an SUV it definitely has a presence to it the one misleading thing about it in terms of design is the door skins are enormous when you look at the door panel on the outside you're just like why this is so big and you'd expect that door from top to bottom to to mirror the interior but no the bottom half of the door is actually mostly just a cover up for the door cell so on the outside it looks like the inside would be much bigger than it is but the inside is definitely still large as a three row SUV you know you want a lot of space that's why you're buying this the rear occupant room is excellent and that's because they haven't screwed around with any type of electronics the second row is Captain's chairs move traditionally with a handle that you can slide forward and back and there's a handle on the side to recline and the recline is at a good angle so you can get really comfortable back there with the way that they've given you the pass through Walk Place in the middle it's easy to get in the third row and the third row is adequately comfortable from what you expect in this class of vehicle again the rear seats kind of mirror the front they are on the firm side again but I think that overall the usability and space in the back is excellent now there is second row climate controls which carry with the vent work towards the back but there are only two vents for the second row which are in the center center console here in the back so that's something to note there is heated seats in the back if you opt for that you know the the package that has that so I think there's a good blend of features and usability in here overall and with the seats up in the back you can store plenty of things but really the big thing is when you put those rear seats down and you put all the seats down it's a massive space in the back with the pH of course with the Hybrid drivetrain and the battery pack you get a 1,500 wat power supply which is great for all the pumps that I use uh for my body and other tools that I use so you have that extra power capacity if you're going out in the wild the rest of the Interior Space a lot of this is traditional Mazda approach that we saw on the Mazda the Mazda 3 it's the concept of not overburdening the driver with too many physical things in front of you either touch or just physical controls and that's the infotainment dial there's only roughly 5 to seven buttons for everything the shifter is very simplified all the HVAC is physical most of all the control structure in this car is physical the infotainment screen is operated by a rotary knob like I drive used to be for BMW it works great it's very simple to use and they've kind of pedal back on the touchscreen aspect because you can use the touchcreen inside Android auto and apple carplay which is really helpful for some features everything else here is traditional Mazda stuff the fit and finish is Pretty good overall the material Choice depending on the trim level you can get this alloy look which has a black paint in it or a black accent that makes it look like it's laser etched but it's not it's it looks very 3D they know how to do interior material choice and this is just a highlight of the best thing they can do for the dollar amount that you can spend the interior usability is a mixed bag and what I mean by that is they talk about the audio system how they move the bass driver from the door panel to the kick plate by the foot well to not only save space but it's better for the audio system but you would think that the door panel and just how large the doors are would have much more minivan esque storage and it's really small compared to some of their competitors you have such a small door panel you would think that the packaging would be better there uh things like the center console are enormous it is really welld designed but it's an enormous place with not a lot of storage and things like the wireless phone charger in the front you're like okay that's a convenient spot because of the rake that it's at it's not angled downward enough where your phone if you take a turn or you hit the brakes it's so easy for your phone to fly out of this space and it's constantly moving off the wireless charger there's things like this that don't make a lot of sense and another thing is when you look at this armrest space you would think this would be a Chasm of storage and it's not I think that's the big thing about this car that surprised me on the interior when you get over some of the beauty and simplicity of design the storage is not the greatest thing in the segment you're going to go through a lot of effort to create this brand new generation architecture where you can kind of scale it out to different vehicles and some of that just starts with what they wanted to do with drivetrain and explaining the updated drivetrain choices in an era where everybody's moving to electrification or hybridization Mazda had is chosen to go with an inline 6 engine Something That We're Not typically seeing everything's going turbocharged four cylinders with hybrization so for them to make that move was largely because of driving Dynamics where they placed the engine where they placed the transmission their drivetrain calibration we had a chance to talk with Dave Coleman about that decision along with one of their drivetrain engineers hi uh my name is J Chen I'm the uh manager for powertrain performance at Mazda R&D North America basically my team and I of uh Japanese and American Engineers we basically work on the tuning aspects of you know making the powert trains that we get from Japan very unique and fit our North American Driving environment this is a big big undertaking for for the company um we've been talking about our little secret since I've been with the company like seven years ago so every time you know media asks us you know trying to dig out future product we were secretly giggling to ourselves in the background like we knew this was coming we were planning so I would say 7 eight years um seriously on paper in the planning uh you know developed and not developed but you know we were on this path and this is going to happen um and then the idea is really not just the powertrain but you know we decided we wanted to go rear drive because that's the ideal platform right rear drive bias so in that then we have to decide what type of power Trin you want to put into it if you put the Power train into it you could just take whatever transmission that's out there on the market or whatever V6 engine that you could sho shoe horn transversal longitudinal yeah those are those those are those Solutions but we're we're Mazda right and we want to be different and we want to show that we're passionate about if we're going to go rear drive let's go big let's do it right so we committed on straight six and this is not just straight six it's a family of straight sixes right here in the US we have two straight six uh um gasoline turbo PL engines in this platform but there's a turbo diesel block that shares essentially the same architecture and everything in Europe you know and I won't talk about what else is potentially available but the entire platform is designed for the straight six architecture the only time that we don't use six-cylinders is when we use a larger pav motor that squeezed in beh in between the four-cylinder engine and our 8-speed transmission also the other thing is it's it it's not so much oh we just try to make uh you know more money by putting in different different software into it it's different customer values right one the 280 horsepower engine is tuned for 87 Aki regular pump gas right you could put more you could put high octane into it it won't make more power it is for that customer that didn't care about the additional 50 60 horsepower and just wants to drive the car as it is and can appreciate hey I'm just going to get pump gas my wife doesn't care I want the three-year-old that's more important but the Turbo S model which is 340 horsepower was for a 91 Aki and that's actually unique in itself because usually our power trains are tuned for like North America style or European style and European is at least 93 Aki right or if not more this is specifically for North America and that's that's the main thing that these two gas engines are ours and ours only well until somebody decides that they want it but they were designed for us in tune for us right so that's the big difference boost and the amount of power that you can make with higher octane but I do want to point out even if you go to a lower octane on the high power car torque's still the same still 369 if you liked our gas engines from previous generations their skyactive 2.5 non-t turbos that's what that 280 horsepower feels like it's it's turbocharged but it's so linear predictable and consistent whereas the 340 horsepower we try to let it stretch it a little bit towards the end reward you a little bit more you know in trying to make a cool rear wheeel drive platform form using a straight six you got a problem you got a very long engine right and if you can either you got two solutions you got to hang it forward to the front axle on top of the front axle or try to shove it as far back as possible well the thinking behind the RZ transmission um which is the 8-speed new transmission for the for the rear drive orientation is that we needed something as narrow and center and long as we can because by doing that we can push everything as far back into the chassis as possible maintain the straight frame rails straight SL the SLA suspension up front um and not intrude into the foot well of the driver right as you know torque converter is about that big you know that thick it's got a lot of rotational inertia it's heavy takes up a lot of space so when we designed this transmission and we did consider others we said no let's do it the Sky Active way let's do it inhouse because it's going to give us full control of the software the hardware the packaging and everything to make it fit this car or this platform so we ended up with a wet clutch wet launch clutch at the back of the transmission that's only this big right much smaller a lot less rotational inertia and by putting it at the back of the 8-speed transmission we made freed up a lot of space in the front for either the 48volt mild hybrid motor that helps you kind of get off the line and and you spoon out torque and shifts and all that or the full pev motor that's up in front um so those were our decisions for going to a torque converter and when you ask about 8 speed speed versus sixspeed um I think it's kind of worthwhile to point out that this is a evolutionary design based off to the lessons that we learned from our Sky Active six-speed transmission on the transverse layout right so we decided to stay with a planetary a planetary layout for all eight gears so it's four planetary rings and stuff you know all the brakes associated with it but the launch clutch is the launch clutch um and you ask well a lot of people have asked us and say well why don't you have eight years you know in the in our previous cars right eighty more is better like well yes and no okay uh yes you can overdrive a transmission and you could get a little more topend fuel economy but in our opinion as Mazda every time you have to shift is an interruption and power in your connection to the Driving Experience or what your foot is doing so we want to minimize interruptions the reason why we went to a 8-speed transmission on this car is because when you take out the torque converter you lose a little bit of that slippy torque multiplication effect so what we had to do was actually take the gear spread on the FZ the front-wheel drive transmission spread it to about 1.4 times what it was and have those lower gears cover that torque slip torque modification effect that the torque converter had on the lowend gears so after one two into three 34 5 6 you still have the same consistent shifting Rhythm and spacing that you had in our old six-speed with just a little bit more overdrive on eight so what are seven and eight doing seven and eight is kind of covering the range of six 56 one two is so low that it far exceeds our original one that driver Sensation that first tip in if you're locked up and tight and you don't have a slip you don't have an interruption when you felt that initial jerk however minimal that's telling your body the vehicle is responding to me and after that it's just the extrapolation of okay cars responding what is this G gain or what is this change in G and is it matching what my intention is after that we can start downshifting and stuff but we want to give you that initial response that locked up response like okay the car is responding I'm going to pull a little bit not enough okay I'll give you another gear down okay and then there's a lot of predictive strategies that we look like how fast did they step how deep did they step on me that'll tell us how many gears how many gears to jump past or okay he only wanted two down or he only wanted one down or hold them eight that's most mostly my team's job to try to predict what your foot is trying to do and the argument that to be fair zf8 speed does not fit a front wheeel drive platform but why not go with the zf8 speed if you drive a BMW product or not so much an FCA product but if you drive an Audi product with that 8s speeed it's hard to argue the cow and that earbox is not almost perfect it's pretty good yeah I mean there's well there there's other competitors of the vag family uh that that have even better things um that we have considered and looked at and all that but you know at that point basically you have a huge massive torque converter you're going to throw away the package balancing packaging and performance understood it's a very moding answer for that no I think I think this is this is worth discussing you could edit out edit in whatever but you know like I think this is one fundamental difference that what Dave works on what I work on Mazda is a little bit different it's like we are not willing to sacrifice the base characteristic of the car when you fire it up so that it's kind of softened up or it's this and that like just Dave will not change steering modes he will not he doesn't like to change suspension cow just because the car you know has a certain physics to it right um we don't want to augment that we don't want to tweak that in a way that kind of tricks you into thinking it's more or less than what it is similarly in the vehicle side when you get into a car in normal mode it is a reflection of what Mazda should be right it's not Comfort mode oh you want to drive okay put it into sport oh and then Sport Plus that's a little bit difference in philosophy but yeah there's architecture differences and feel differences that um you'll definitely feel and those German braks I'm Dave Coleman I'm the manager of vehicle Dynamics at Mazda North America so a rear drive platform gives you a sort of more neutral and consistent vehicle Dynamics the CX9 was quite good and in fact when we were kind of hunting around for benchmarking targets for for this car we circled back around and started looking at CX9 again as our main target like what let's just start from CX9 what do we want to be better right um and we just want the to sort of expand the performance envelope of the car the idea of going uh in a more premium direction is the car you never run into the limits of the car um we want the car to be able to anything you ask of it and always feel like it's got more performance in reserve so that's really what we're going for with this car so uh in ordinary daily driving it should just feel comfortable and natural and then as you start pushing it you're not you're going to have a really hard time reaching the limits of the car and if that means pushing it you know chucking it around the entrance ramp or if that means you know going up to your favorite camping spot and the road's washed out and you have to go over some really weird slippery stuff it's going to go do that if it means hooking up a big trailer to the back it's going to do that it's just a matter of expanding the capability to beyond what people are expecting of it the benefit of a double Wishbone uh is a couple things for cornering uh when we go into a corner the body rolls and the tire would want to roll with it the double Wishbone the upper Wishbone being shorter pulls as it compresses it pulls the top of the tire in and keeps that tire upright so we end up with more front grip uh and and ultimately we want to maximize the grip at both ends of the car and use up all of the grip on all four tires at the same time to to get the most handling performance out of the car um but from a ride viewpoint also uh a mician strut has a bunch of side load on on the strut itself like the if we have a strut here the wheel is pushing this way and it's putting a side load on the sliding part of the strut puts a little bit of friction in there so every time you run over a bump to get the wheel to start moving it has to overcome that friction first and then start to move and a double Wishbone the wheel position is completely supported by the the joints the ball joints and the bushings in the suspension and the the the the sliding part of the shock is just sitting on their holding up the weight there's no side load on it uh and so that moves more smoothly at the very initial stroke uh and that initial stroke helps ride quality it also helps steering because when you turn the the very the more subtle the more smaller your steering input the more we want a very small subtle matching reaction from the body to get the car to to naturally sort of trace your inputs uh so friction reduction in the suspension is a big deal for us the the thing that makes Maza unique I think is our focus on driving Dynamics and what our Target is with our driving Dynamics it's it's a intuitiveness that we call G by Thai especially when we're talking about batas but that that philosophy of Horse and Rider is one that informs all of our uh tuning for all of our cars we're trying to make the car move in a way that's so intuitive that you don't notice the car uh and to do that we have to really kind of study how humans move how they balance and figure out how to make a car move in a way that feels intuitive to us um the the fact that we have double wish Bones on the front the fact that we have a five Link in the back doesn't necessarily tell you what it is we're trying to do if you have to look at the kinematics themselves and realize what we're doing is we're keeping a very simple suspension motion that doesn't have a lot of tow change um that uh we you know we put one of the reasons we put the steering rack up in the front is so that we don't have to uh worry about the when when the uh the when you're cornering and the lower control arm bushing is deflecting uh that'll tow the front out a little bit which stabilizes the car if we put the steering rack in the back for example it would tow it in and that would make the car unstable so therefore we'd have to put a bunch of roll steer in there to counteract that compliant steer and then next thing you know all everything as you go over bumps the car is steering and moving around and all of these little very very subtle move movements that you don't notice consciously you do notice subconsciously and you just get tired from all this movement and all this this feeling that you can't really balance against so all this very complicated Hardware is there to make the car move in a very simple way yeah so yeah we this car has to carry six seven eight people to a trailer do all these really practical things be comfortable uh and and then secretly we want it to be a race car right that that's that's you know us you know that's what we're really trying to do if your philosophy for driving Dynamics is what ours is that the car should be linear and predictable and consistent that lets you marry these two seemingly conflicting things right uh we don't necessarily want the car to be the soft ofest thing possible that isolates you over all bumps because if you do that when you hit a slightly bigger bump than we anticipated it all falls apart um what we want the car to do is be completely predictable so that you know exactly what it's going to do when you see something on the road ahead Boop that's exactly what I expected to do when you turn it into a corner it goes exactly where you expected it to go and that is a philosophy that will translate across normal daily boring driving and driving fast um if you're trying to just be comfortable and just drive gently and you give it gentle inputs it moves gently and if you're trying to be aggressive and go have some fun it'll be fun uh and that linearity gets you that all modern all-wheel drive systems 99% of all modern all-wheel drive systems will drive two of the wheels all the time directly off the transmission and then the other two wheels get driven by a clutch sort of on demand uh that idea has been around for 20125 years they used to be pretty dumb and reactive where you would spin the primary drive Drive wheels and then it would engage a clutch and send power to the other other end and that was good for not getting stuck getting out of a snowy situation but it was terrible for driving Dynamics because you lose control and then regain control um as our control systems have gotten faster and faster and our Precision of how how exactly we control that clutch has gotten better and better we can do much more sophisticated things with that same concept of driven wheels and secondary Wheels um so there's two two different things that go on when you send torque to your secondary Wheels uh as you lock up that clutch you make those front rear wheels go the same speed which of course makes car want to go straight um and if any amount of preload on that clutch will create a little bit of of damping when the car tries to rotate when it's yaws right so managing the trade-off of uh torque split versus yaw damping um started off as a a managing a negative and has evolved to where the the Y damping control is actually one of the most useful tools that we have it's now a positive point that we can use the all-wheel drive system to adjust the Y damping of the vehicle um so for example the way we basically balance that is we've got three algorithms in in the system that are are looking at the the allo drive system from three different angles there's one that's trying to predict uh which tires are going to have the most grip and send the torque there and you can predict that pretty easily because the amount of traction you have is the the me of the Surface Times the normal force being pushed down on it we don't know the me of the surface but we know how hard each tire is getting pushed down indirectly by knowing how heavy the car is and knowing where the center of gravity is in the wheelbase and just looking at the G sensors the the weight shifts forward or back uh we can calculate the load on each tire and send torque where where it's likely to have the most grip now if we get in a split M situation we can't predict that so we're also of course watching if one wheel suddenly starts going faster we'll catch it within the fraction of a rotation and send torque to the other in and and react to that if we need to but both of those things are just looking at traction and if we happen to be in a situation where we've got a that torque transfer clutch locked up pretty hard and we're trying to turn the car is just going to under steer so we have a third algorithm that looks at steering input and trims down whatever torque split we have at that moment and reduces it in proportion to the driver's steering input so the car will carve a natural Arc through the corner um and that last algorithm has turned out to be really powerful for us for tuning and dialing in the steering feedback to make sure that what the steering is telling you is matching what the vehicle is going to do it's actually one of the last things that we tune uh as we got everything else behaving the way we wanted to and the steering there still you know some subtle spots where the steering's not quite telling me the right thing we'll tweak that all-wheel drive algorithm until it's it's it's communicating through your hands exactly how the car is going to go around the corner so yeah let's let's talk about active torque transfer and and and uh torque vectoring and all that kind of stuff because that's stuff that we we don't do very intentionally it's not like a cost saving we could torque Vector with the same Hardware that we use for kinematic posture control what we're trying to do is make the car carve through a corner in a certain very predictable natural way where the g-forces and the ya motions that you feel come from the front tires turning building up load pitching the car forward you the the the sequence of load transfer through this the chassis is consistent and predictable and makes it easy for you to control the car there are cars that have uh torque factoring systems where you'll go into a corner you'll do a certain thing you'll reach the limit and suddenly some yaw comes out of nowhere and it does more I don't personally mind that I think that's fun but I'm a rally driver right I like you can you can expand the envelope beyond what you expected to do but what we're after is completely predictable Behavior so we want to get that extra margin by making the original existing load path uh through the suspension make that work better so one of the things we do is the the kinematic posture control where we're keeping the rear suspension in the middle of its stroke uh through the higher G uh um Corners so what that's doing is it's looking at the difference in wheel speed between the inside and outside rear tires and and it's figuring out how tight a corner you're going through uh by by that uh and then it's dragging the inside brake just a touch if we drag the inside brake a lot we get torque factoring uh we increase introduce a yaw moment but we're not dragging it enough to do that you actually you know watch the data with and without The Brak and there's no change in the ya moment but what we're doing is just enough to P pull down on the rear suspension uh because we have anti-dive geometry that that helps prevent dive that same geometry just pulls the inside rear down a little bit and that keeps the suspension in its more neutral uh posture through the corner reduces body roll of touch um but mostly what it's doing is making the car behave more predictably through the corner your priority isn't NE necessary the most Nimble feeling car but it's the most linear feeling car right the most Nimble feeling car is a synonym for the most Twitchy feeling car those those are two sides of the same coin what we want is is the car that does exactly what you're asking of so we intentionally have relatively slow steering because we need resolution so the driver can make mid Corner inputs and they're not they're not Twitchy if you have a there's a there's a trend in a lot of cars you have really fast steering racks because electric power steering sort of opens up these possibilities but if you have a really fast steering ratio to keep it from being Twitchy you have to add a lot lot of damping to the software so that so that you don't a little quick input doesn't translate through to the tires that damping blocks any feedback from the tires um so what you're feeling through your hands is not what the tires are doing it's the damping algorithm that you're feeling uh and we want to run as little damping as we possibly can so you have a chance to understand what the tire is doing and that's what tells you where the car is going to go um if we run the the low damping setting that we have on our steering with a quick 13 to1 steer steering rack then when you sneeze you're going to end up in a ditch right so that's that's why we stick to a more traditional slower steering rack give you adjustability and predictability through a corner is it Tumi time Mark yeah give it to me and I need boost mode too I put it into put past the D for boost mode I've been boosted 4 cylinders pH we're in the model that I think most people are going to buy because the fuel economy benefits this is not the inline six that I've driven essentially every every iteration of this car Turbo S regular inline six and now this phv I'm going to put it back into and why are we in the phv now Jack because our Turbo S pre-production press car that we got a couple weeks ago wasn't right and during the launch program I focused on shooting interviews with everyone who made this car so hopefully by the time you get to this section of the video if you've heard from all the tumis themselves and the Tumi dogs and everyone associated with this car at this point their their house cleaners yeah everybody their personal masseuse like we I have to put this out there because we're a Mazda sympathy I er uh and uh I really like the brand it's a brand that doesn't have a lot of resources and maximizes everything that they do and you know there's a lot of excuses that you can make for a team that works as hard as they can or they don't have 500 people to to work on one thing yeah they're not a Toyota they're not a Toyota they're not a Ford they're not a GM they consistently turn out the best thing that they can do with the resources and you know I'm already setting this up to make a lot of excuses so far all right cx90 everyone's asked me and we've heard from everybody how does this thing Drive what do you think about it uh so I don't have as much time in it as you I've driven the Turbo S in this and one of the reasons why as you already stated I couldn't release a video on the Turbo S because I wasn't particularly sure that there wasn't something wrong with it from the cross traffic alert system malfunctioning thinking there were cars always there when there's nobody around still in this pH uh so there software weirdness uh there's drivetrain growl when you turn and accelerate there was a vibration through the entire car that felt like something was loose or vibrating uh and then you know there there was other things so I'm just I gave it a pass and the ride quality was I I don't know what was going on with it but we sent it back and sent it to the dealer to see what was up so this car is the replacement for it and I will say let's start with the body control and handling and I know Dave is going to be mad cuz we're not on some Canyon Road with this thing but this is a reality of what people but I did drive the Turbo S in San Francisco on his Drive route okay and how was it it's a very uniquely Mazda product okay what I mean by that is they care more about linearity of inputs and that everything feels as Progressive and as whatever their acronym is hor and Rider as one as possible most of Jin by Tha oh thank you Jin By Thai and the Sichuan s they care more about their principles than necessarily building a car that is what their buyers are looking for typically people in this segment like the minivan driver in front of us are looking for something soft something isolated and something that feels Nimble because the steering is so slow in this car and yes you can make mid Corner Corrections which Dave talked about you know most people don't get give a right they want it to feel fast in the front end and the fact that you have to go like you know you have to give it almost a full lock of turn to get into a basic Corner the steering feels very slow yes it's linear is and it's easy to make adjustments but the front end doesn't feel fast because they've prioritized minimal headbob and you know the worst case example is like the grand Highlander or the tell you ride you do a lot of secondary motions this car they didn't want to have that problem at all so this the ride is it really is shockingly stiff for a big three row SUV is it punishing no but we have a cross Trek at the same time as this thing brand new cross truck and that thing rides better than this does which is kind of surprising I I will say that it is with all due respect that philosophy does not work on this it it does not work it's not the right product to have that type of DNA baked in and I think it's one of those where you have to swallow your pride and realize that this needs to to be it needs a different philosophy in suspension tuning and ride control the body control is good but as soon as you get on a bumpy road like out here in the Midwest Michigan and Illinois wherever you hit those small like sudden impacts the high frequency like impact of this car is really really jarring it remind the only other SUV to me that rides equally or if not worse and a lot of it is body structure was the XC90 that car felt like the front and the rear end weren't screwed together completely it felt like there was just so much shock wave through the body this does a better job isolating you out but it also has a lot of like high frequency impacts that go through your body and it it doesn't feel like what it should be doing is isolating all of that out for a car like this you shouldn't be feeling it you should be floating more and it doesn't uh this the Counterpoint is is yes when you get it into the twist of your roads it handles great the body controls good you don't float around but that's like for most people 5% the other 95% is probably like 1% a three row that you're going to use for your family yeah you you want to be isolated out and you're just not enough in here and I think it's a big problem and probably you have the same problem that Toyota did with a grand Highlander when you deal with one shock damping profile you don't have a dual valve design shock you don't have adaptive dampers where you can you can play with the software part of it you can go soft or you can go firm so you're stuck with this one and they chose it to to have this better body control at the sacrifice of overall Comfort I don't know the interior and exterior of this car are beautiful I think it's a very pretty car I like the fact that they've gone to rear whe Drive architecture but you don't notice it you can't tell I mean honestly like when you're normally driving 95% of the time my big issue with this is I've spent just a marginal amount of time in two trim levels and I feel like I'm thinking way more about it than should be I feel like there's I should instantly just have a sense like a lot of other cars that oh the ride quality BLS pilot when you pilot it handles well it rides soft it does all the three row SUV things and then when I drive it the drivetrain disappears into the background which in the two cars that we drove it doesn't on this it does weird things jerking and like lift off like almost knock or shutter sometimes um there's weird programming things that the drivetrains do and the inline sticks and in this um just hesitation or bucking I mean there's so many little things here that I don't feel like they have completely sorted out yet that um it's it's hard because I had high expectations like it could be the other thing you know rear wheeel drive architecture uh New Generation inline six you hear all these things like great interior beautiful exterior for a crossover SUV and then you get in here and you're like man they need another like four or 5 years of development so like like sorted I'm not saying that in a bad way but it just it doesn't align with like some of the other brands where they have all these little things sorted out they don't it doesn't feel like that here let's talk about drivetrain so the inline six it is very smooth and for the class of car it competes in both in the let's call it in the 40,000 to the mid-50s it does a good job right it has more character than say like the MDX V6 yeah is it as refined as like the b58 no it's not but it's at a different price point the hybrid in this car does return decent fuel economy you're getting 30 m per gallon which is really good in a three row and when you're moving you don't really notice the hybrid Tendencies of this you don't really think about the fact that it's got a four popper versus a six or the handoff between electric and gas yeah that's really smooth actually but when you are in creeping in traffic in that 1 to 2% throttle application you feel it you feel in a way that you don't feel it in the Toyota products again that comes from the fact that they've been doing hybrids for a billion years and the and the gear boes they're really smooth when you're moving but when you creep in traffic or every so often it kind of lift off you know just the the subtle inputs the subtleties of like coming rolling or getting starter just kind of like the like you said like the slower traffic it it it doesn't go disappear like a lot of the other competitors it doesn't disappear into the background it's constantly doing things and this is one of the few cars or SUV or truck whatever you want to call it that I feel like I need an extended period of time driving this like not just a week I'd probably need a month before some of this just Falls away and it becomes normal to me but the the challenging part of that for me is that's not how most customers are going to be if you're not a Mazda fanatic you're you're going to get in you're going to love it if you love mazas but if you're a normal person and you get into this compared to like a Toyota and you have a one-day test drive other than the looks and the interior wowing you if you care about some of these other Drive ility things it might might set up some red flags I funnily enough I had a conversation with a lot of the engineers off camera about you know they asked me genuinely what I thought and I think one of the issues that they're going to have is their uniquely Moz the philosophy of everything's lener no gimmicks the modern car buyer doesn't give a they care about gimmicks right when they the reason why Drive modes exist in cars is so you can wow a customer with look it can go Ultra stiff and it can go Ultra Soft are either of those good who cares the consumer doesn't know any better steering is it linear most of the time steering needs to be fast in cars not because it's better but because it gives the illusion of being at nimble like a brand new BMW X5 X3 almost every car with a uh adaptive rack you know a variable rate rack you know where you get that quickness this doesn't have it and that's why I said like this philosophy what they're trying to do here just really doesn't work for this and it's not that they're philosophy's wrong it's just this requires a different approach that I don't think they have for this and I don't know if it's better or worse I really I don't want to judge it based on that because customers could like it but I you know I need to go back and really look at this like and nitpick certain things and look at the pros and the cons and come back to this car again and I hate to say it but it's one of those I really need to revisit yep with that Mark I think it's time for us to wrap up this incredibly long video thanks Jack beeps God final thoughts on the cx90 given the re-shoot the amount of time thinking about this and of course driving the phev and of course the inline 6 version we were left feeling a bit mixed after driving almost all of the three row competition from the pilot to the MDX the MDX Type S the X7 the Audi equivalence you know there's a lot of comp comptition out there now and I think what they're trying to do is find some Middle Ground between the luxury products and the commodity products and find this real sweet spot where they're trying to focus on driving enjoyment and driving linearity and of course offering you some luxury appointments while not making it feel so cookie cutter and in this Chase to do it I unfortunately I think some of the other brands have outpaced them in their own game when you drive the pilot despite it being a front-wheel drive architecture with a torque vectoring rear it just feels softer it feels like it rides better most of the time it feels more Nimble under that 70% driving threshold the MDX is very similar to that and you look at things like the toride and the Palisade which are ancient at this point they always ride softer but they are horrible to drive above 50% but I think the main takeaway is if you're buying a three row most of the three row expectations like the Highlanders the grand Highlanders is that they are really soft they don't need to be great driving because you're never doing that you're hauling you're you're towing you're putting people in it so I feel like a lot of the the tuning of this car sacrifices some of the things that three row people are going to care about in the chase of you know maybe making it more engaging to drive and it's really still not that engaging to drive uh and that was the big thing some of the drivetrain celebration was also a little bit off the the inline six version the performance version that we drove or the Turbo S uh there was more Drive Line shutter in that thing than I've ever felt in a modern car it felt like there was a lot of vibration either from the differential or the drive shaft there was just a lot of vibration that came from the engine and certain RPM that wasn't isolated out that's why we thought there was a problem the pH definitely smooth things out um but there's still strangeness in Transmissions tuning and calibration where there's the switch over point where you have electric assist to transmission like gear hunting sometimes it's not perfectly smooth and I think that's where of course in a first generation product despite as much work as you can put into it there's still some things to be sorted out there and philosophically you can't argue with Mazda this is what they want to do this is what's made them different from everybody else that the driving part the connectedness part I just think as a three row SUV this is is not the vehicle that really needs a lot of that and I think in some cases it's worse for trying to inject some of that in and I know that's bad but I feel like some of the other brands have figured out how to do it better where as a everyday vehicle like the CX9 was I think the CX9 even did a better job than the cx90 did at trying to make it that Cruiser that smooth Cruiser um easier to drive it felt softer most of the time but anyway you know this to me is probably one of the more interesting Vehicles I've ever driven in this price range and it's a testament to them as engineers and designers are really not trying to do the same thing we complain about this all the time every Brand's trying to copy and paste and do their do the same thing Chase popularity and Mazda is just trying to do their own thing now whether or not that's going to resonate with customers I don't know and I I don't even want to say but when you look at the the vehicle overall it is definitely a special experience and I will give them that it's something that you want to get in and if you're looking for that different three row that's not the same thing you're really going to appreciate what they did and I jack and I both really do love that about the cx90 I can't wait for their other products on this platform to see how they scale it out how they make improvements and we'll cover it then thanks for watching see you next videothe Mazda cx90 a new direction for this brand in this video you're going to see an hour's worth of content from interviews with the designers the engineers to help explain the ideology behind what this vehicle is and where they're going in the future Mazda had pushed the front-wheel drive architecture to the absolute limits of trying to make it feel more upscale and they hit a wall and they had to create a rear wheeel drive platform that was similar to something you see in luxury Brands like BMW and Mercedes but the cx90 and its future iterations are all built in a price point where most of normal people could afford starting around 40,000 and moving upward so they're trying to bring a lot of that into this Japanese formula that they've been great at and out of the five years of doing this I've had more messages and and emails from people asking where this video was and why it hasn't been released and I'm going to tell you right front this was a very very difficult video for me to put together every time I went to go edit it I just shelved it and a lot of it was because there was a lot of content and a lot of it was because we went through two different press cars where Jack and I were left with questions of is this normal is this right is this what they set up to do and over the course of making this video I've had to go through re-shoot and all of that which is not a good sign but I'm going to do my best not to throw the brand under the bus I want to be very objective about about what it is and what it's not the good and the bad because when you create something like this new and there's so much energy and money put into it I I think they were in the right direction for a majority of this but there's some things that they probably can improve and I want to be fair to the viewers and I want to be fair to them as a brand so I feel like my hands are tied in a way of trying to trying to assemble this video but first let's hear a little bit about what the cx90 in this generation vehicle is I am MIT and I am the program manager sh90 I have worked for master for about 34 years and uh originally I was body engineering engineer and then I was in South California to work for North American operation and to understand our us Target customers uh needs and the batteries this is probably my last outcome outcome of my Master's career so I just wanted to realize the best product in the master history so I'm John Leverett uh launch strategy manager for Mazda so planning the overarching product strategy um before it reaches kind of the other departments well we knew um from CX9 that some of the things that we needed to prioritize were space uh you know CX9 as great of a product as it is we know that it's a little small um so when planning a new product we knew that we wanted a larger size um but we also knew that we needed to keep the Mazda driving Dynamics um and keep the things that our customers love um they're kind of our brand identity items like performance uh ride and handling things like that so uh if you're going to if you're going to add more size uh how can we do that and keep those handling aspects and that's kind of how we arrived at that rear wheeel drive platform with an inline 6 engine yeah so obviously with a higher price comes expected content um and not only did we you know want to add things like ventilated rear seats which starts to become an expectation now heated rear seats um a panoramic sunroof those things are expected and then just some more luxury touch items like a Power Tilt and telescopic steering wheel you know it's the first time we've had that feature probably since like the Millennia in n in the '90s you know so uh just some features like that that that are uh certainly Elevate the product to kind of that luxury standard one of the big things that Mazda has done great in this generation starting with the Mazda 3 and the cx30 and then of course the MX is material Choice the interior design for the price point is really really special and the cx90 attempts to do that on another level because they want to go and make this the flagship vehicle for their brand despite it being a three row so when you look at the center plane the dash the stitching the material Choice depending on what trim level you get and of course the interior color selection there is a a sense of clarity and their vision of making it very clean Mazda likee purposeful and not making it cheesy we see this with a lot of luxury Brands where they will throw the kitchen sink at you in terms of odd material choices and screens and all this in it it really winds up after you get get over it it's just a bunch of gimmicks where this feels more classically designed physical more tangible and the cx90 does a really good job with it I'll be honest when you look at this for like 50 60 Grand you know and you look at some of the other commodity brands that are doing it this this definitely is on they're on the right path now when you look at the entire style of this you could see that it's just got a classic Mazda design but it looks so long and so Sleek for an SUV it definitely has a presence to it the one misleading thing about it in terms of design is the door skins are enormous when you look at the door panel on the outside you're just like why this is so big and you'd expect that door from top to bottom to to mirror the interior but no the bottom half of the door is actually mostly just a cover up for the door cell so on the outside it looks like the inside would be much bigger than it is but the inside is definitely still large as a three row SUV you know you want a lot of space that's why you're buying this the rear occupant room is excellent and that's because they haven't screwed around with any type of electronics the second row is Captain's chairs move traditionally with a handle that you can slide forward and back and there's a handle on the side to recline and the recline is at a good angle so you can get really comfortable back there with the way that they've given you the pass through Walk Place in the middle it's easy to get in the third row and the third row is adequately comfortable from what you expect in this class of vehicle again the rear seats kind of mirror the front they are on the firm side again but I think that overall the usability and space in the back is excellent now there is second row climate controls which carry with the vent work towards the back but there are only two vents for the second row which are in the center center console here in the back so that's something to note there is heated seats in the back if you opt for that you know the the package that has that so I think there's a good blend of features and usability in here overall and with the seats up in the back you can store plenty of things but really the big thing is when you put those rear seats down and you put all the seats down it's a massive space in the back with the pH of course with the Hybrid drivetrain and the battery pack you get a 1,500 wat power supply which is great for all the pumps that I use uh for my body and other tools that I use so you have that extra power capacity if you're going out in the wild the rest of the Interior Space a lot of this is traditional Mazda approach that we saw on the Mazda the Mazda 3 it's the concept of not overburdening the driver with too many physical things in front of you either touch or just physical controls and that's the infotainment dial there's only roughly 5 to seven buttons for everything the shifter is very simplified all the HVAC is physical most of all the control structure in this car is physical the infotainment screen is operated by a rotary knob like I drive used to be for BMW it works great it's very simple to use and they've kind of pedal back on the touchscreen aspect because you can use the touchcreen inside Android auto and apple carplay which is really helpful for some features everything else here is traditional Mazda stuff the fit and finish is Pretty good overall the material Choice depending on the trim level you can get this alloy look which has a black paint in it or a black accent that makes it look like it's laser etched but it's not it's it looks very 3D they know how to do interior material choice and this is just a highlight of the best thing they can do for the dollar amount that you can spend the interior usability is a mixed bag and what I mean by that is they talk about the audio system how they move the bass driver from the door panel to the kick plate by the foot well to not only save space but it's better for the audio system but you would think that the door panel and just how large the doors are would have much more minivan esque storage and it's really small compared to some of their competitors you have such a small door panel you would think that the packaging would be better there uh things like the center console are enormous it is really welld designed but it's an enormous place with not a lot of storage and things like the wireless phone charger in the front you're like okay that's a convenient spot because of the rake that it's at it's not angled downward enough where your phone if you take a turn or you hit the brakes it's so easy for your phone to fly out of this space and it's constantly moving off the wireless charger there's things like this that don't make a lot of sense and another thing is when you look at this armrest space you would think this would be a Chasm of storage and it's not I think that's the big thing about this car that surprised me on the interior when you get over some of the beauty and simplicity of design the storage is not the greatest thing in the segment you're going to go through a lot of effort to create this brand new generation architecture where you can kind of scale it out to different vehicles and some of that just starts with what they wanted to do with drivetrain and explaining the updated drivetrain choices in an era where everybody's moving to electrification or hybridization Mazda had is chosen to go with an inline 6 engine Something That We're Not typically seeing everything's going turbocharged four cylinders with hybrization so for them to make that move was largely because of driving Dynamics where they placed the engine where they placed the transmission their drivetrain calibration we had a chance to talk with Dave Coleman about that decision along with one of their drivetrain engineers hi uh my name is J Chen I'm the uh manager for powertrain performance at Mazda R&D North America basically my team and I of uh Japanese and American Engineers we basically work on the tuning aspects of you know making the powert trains that we get from Japan very unique and fit our North American Driving environment this is a big big undertaking for for the company um we've been talking about our little secret since I've been with the company like seven years ago so every time you know media asks us you know trying to dig out future product we were secretly giggling to ourselves in the background like we knew this was coming we were planning so I would say 7 eight years um seriously on paper in the planning uh you know developed and not developed but you know we were on this path and this is going to happen um and then the idea is really not just the powertrain but you know we decided we wanted to go rear drive because that's the ideal platform right rear drive bias so in that then we have to decide what type of power Trin you want to put into it if you put the Power train into it you could just take whatever transmission that's out there on the market or whatever V6 engine that you could sho shoe horn transversal longitudinal yeah those are those those are those Solutions but we're we're Mazda right and we want to be different and we want to show that we're passionate about if we're going to go rear drive let's go big let's do it right so we committed on straight six and this is not just straight six it's a family of straight sixes right here in the US we have two straight six uh um gasoline turbo PL engines in this platform but there's a turbo diesel block that shares essentially the same architecture and everything in Europe you know and I won't talk about what else is potentially available but the entire platform is designed for the straight six architecture the only time that we don't use six-cylinders is when we use a larger pav motor that squeezed in beh in between the four-cylinder engine and our 8-speed transmission also the other thing is it's it it's not so much oh we just try to make uh you know more money by putting in different different software into it it's different customer values right one the 280 horsepower engine is tuned for 87 Aki regular pump gas right you could put more you could put high octane into it it won't make more power it is for that customer that didn't care about the additional 50 60 horsepower and just wants to drive the car as it is and can appreciate hey I'm just going to get pump gas my wife doesn't care I want the three-year-old that's more important but the Turbo S model which is 340 horsepower was for a 91 Aki and that's actually unique in itself because usually our power trains are tuned for like North America style or European style and European is at least 93 Aki right or if not more this is specifically for North America and that's that's the main thing that these two gas engines are ours and ours only well until somebody decides that they want it but they were designed for us in tune for us right so that's the big difference boost and the amount of power that you can make with higher octane but I do want to point out even if you go to a lower octane on the high power car torque's still the same still 369 if you liked our gas engines from previous generations their skyactive 2.5 non-t turbos that's what that 280 horsepower feels like it's it's turbocharged but it's so linear predictable and consistent whereas the 340 horsepower we try to let it stretch it a little bit towards the end reward you a little bit more you know in trying to make a cool rear wheeel drive platform form using a straight six you got a problem you got a very long engine right and if you can either you got two solutions you got to hang it forward to the front axle on top of the front axle or try to shove it as far back as possible well the thinking behind the RZ transmission um which is the 8-speed new transmission for the for the rear drive orientation is that we needed something as narrow and center and long as we can because by doing that we can push everything as far back into the chassis as possible maintain the straight frame rails straight SL the SLA suspension up front um and not intrude into the foot well of the driver right as you know torque converter is about that big you know that thick it's got a lot of rotational inertia it's heavy takes up a lot of space so when we designed this transmission and we did consider others we said no let's do it the Sky Active way let's do it inhouse because it's going to give us full control of the software the hardware the packaging and everything to make it fit this car or this platform so we ended up with a wet clutch wet launch clutch at the back of the transmission that's only this big right much smaller a lot less rotational inertia and by putting it at the back of the 8-speed transmission we made freed up a lot of space in the front for either the 48volt mild hybrid motor that helps you kind of get off the line and and you spoon out torque and shifts and all that or the full pev motor that's up in front um so those were our decisions for going to a torque converter and when you ask about 8 speed speed versus sixspeed um I think it's kind of worthwhile to point out that this is a evolutionary design based off to the lessons that we learned from our Sky Active six-speed transmission on the transverse layout right so we decided to stay with a planetary a planetary layout for all eight gears so it's four planetary rings and stuff you know all the brakes associated with it but the launch clutch is the launch clutch um and you ask well a lot of people have asked us and say well why don't you have eight years you know in the in our previous cars right eighty more is better like well yes and no okay uh yes you can overdrive a transmission and you could get a little more topend fuel economy but in our opinion as Mazda every time you have to shift is an interruption and power in your connection to the Driving Experience or what your foot is doing so we want to minimize interruptions the reason why we went to a 8-speed transmission on this car is because when you take out the torque converter you lose a little bit of that slippy torque multiplication effect so what we had to do was actually take the gear spread on the FZ the front-wheel drive transmission spread it to about 1.4 times what it was and have those lower gears cover that torque slip torque modification effect that the torque converter had on the lowend gears so after one two into three 34 5 6 you still have the same consistent shifting Rhythm and spacing that you had in our old six-speed with just a little bit more overdrive on eight so what are seven and eight doing seven and eight is kind of covering the range of six 56 one two is so low that it far exceeds our original one that driver Sensation that first tip in if you're locked up and tight and you don't have a slip you don't have an interruption when you felt that initial jerk however minimal that's telling your body the vehicle is responding to me and after that it's just the extrapolation of okay cars responding what is this G gain or what is this change in G and is it matching what my intention is after that we can start downshifting and stuff but we want to give you that initial response that locked up response like okay the car is responding I'm going to pull a little bit not enough okay I'll give you another gear down okay and then there's a lot of predictive strategies that we look like how fast did they step how deep did they step on me that'll tell us how many gears how many gears to jump past or okay he only wanted two down or he only wanted one down or hold them eight that's most mostly my team's job to try to predict what your foot is trying to do and the argument that to be fair zf8 speed does not fit a front wheeel drive platform but why not go with the zf8 speed if you drive a BMW product or not so much an FCA product but if you drive an Audi product with that 8s speeed it's hard to argue the cow and that earbox is not almost perfect it's pretty good yeah I mean there's well there there's other competitors of the vag family uh that that have even better things um that we have considered and looked at and all that but you know at that point basically you have a huge massive torque converter you're going to throw away the package balancing packaging and performance understood it's a very moding answer for that no I think I think this is this is worth discussing you could edit out edit in whatever but you know like I think this is one fundamental difference that what Dave works on what I work on Mazda is a little bit different it's like we are not willing to sacrifice the base characteristic of the car when you fire it up so that it's kind of softened up or it's this and that like just Dave will not change steering modes he will not he doesn't like to change suspension cow just because the car you know has a certain physics to it right um we don't want to augment that we don't want to tweak that in a way that kind of tricks you into thinking it's more or less than what it is similarly in the vehicle side when you get into a car in normal mode it is a reflection of what Mazda should be right it's not Comfort mode oh you want to drive okay put it into sport oh and then Sport Plus that's a little bit difference in philosophy but yeah there's architecture differences and feel differences that um you'll definitely feel and those German braks I'm Dave Coleman I'm the manager of vehicle Dynamics at Mazda North America so a rear drive platform gives you a sort of more neutral and consistent vehicle Dynamics the CX9 was quite good and in fact when we were kind of hunting around for benchmarking targets for for this car we circled back around and started looking at CX9 again as our main target like what let's just start from CX9 what do we want to be better right um and we just want the to sort of expand the performance envelope of the car the idea of going uh in a more premium direction is the car you never run into the limits of the car um we want the car to be able to anything you ask of it and always feel like it's got more performance in reserve so that's really what we're going for with this car so uh in ordinary daily driving it should just feel comfortable and natural and then as you start pushing it you're not you're going to have a really hard time reaching the limits of the car and if that means pushing it you know chucking it around the entrance ramp or if that means you know going up to your favorite camping spot and the road's washed out and you have to go over some really weird slippery stuff it's going to go do that if it means hooking up a big trailer to the back it's going to do that it's just a matter of expanding the capability to beyond what people are expecting of it the benefit of a double Wishbone uh is a couple things for cornering uh when we go into a corner the body rolls and the tire would want to roll with it the double Wishbone the upper Wishbone being shorter pulls as it compresses it pulls the top of the tire in and keeps that tire upright so we end up with more front grip uh and and ultimately we want to maximize the grip at both ends of the car and use up all of the grip on all four tires at the same time to to get the most handling performance out of the car um but from a ride viewpoint also uh a mician strut has a bunch of side load on on the strut itself like the if we have a strut here the wheel is pushing this way and it's putting a side load on the sliding part of the strut puts a little bit of friction in there so every time you run over a bump to get the wheel to start moving it has to overcome that friction first and then start to move and a double Wishbone the wheel position is completely supported by the the joints the ball joints and the bushings in the suspension and the the the the sliding part of the shock is just sitting on their holding up the weight there's no side load on it uh and so that moves more smoothly at the very initial stroke uh and that initial stroke helps ride quality it also helps steering because when you turn the the very the more subtle the more smaller your steering input the more we want a very small subtle matching reaction from the body to get the car to to naturally sort of trace your inputs uh so friction reduction in the suspension is a big deal for us the the thing that makes Maza unique I think is our focus on driving Dynamics and what our Target is with our driving Dynamics it's it's a intuitiveness that we call G by Thai especially when we're talking about batas but that that philosophy of Horse and Rider is one that informs all of our uh tuning for all of our cars we're trying to make the car move in a way that's so intuitive that you don't notice the car uh and to do that we have to really kind of study how humans move how they balance and figure out how to make a car move in a way that feels intuitive to us um the the fact that we have double wish Bones on the front the fact that we have a five Link in the back doesn't necessarily tell you what it is we're trying to do if you have to look at the kinematics themselves and realize what we're doing is we're keeping a very simple suspension motion that doesn't have a lot of tow change um that uh we you know we put one of the reasons we put the steering rack up in the front is so that we don't have to uh worry about the when when the uh the when you're cornering and the lower control arm bushing is deflecting uh that'll tow the front out a little bit which stabilizes the car if we put the steering rack in the back for example it would tow it in and that would make the car unstable so therefore we'd have to put a bunch of roll steer in there to counteract that compliant steer and then next thing you know all everything as you go over bumps the car is steering and moving around and all of these little very very subtle move movements that you don't notice consciously you do notice subconsciously and you just get tired from all this movement and all this this feeling that you can't really balance against so all this very complicated Hardware is there to make the car move in a very simple way yeah so yeah we this car has to carry six seven eight people to a trailer do all these really practical things be comfortable uh and and then secretly we want it to be a race car right that that's that's you know us you know that's what we're really trying to do if your philosophy for driving Dynamics is what ours is that the car should be linear and predictable and consistent that lets you marry these two seemingly conflicting things right uh we don't necessarily want the car to be the soft ofest thing possible that isolates you over all bumps because if you do that when you hit a slightly bigger bump than we anticipated it all falls apart um what we want the car to do is be completely predictable so that you know exactly what it's going to do when you see something on the road ahead Boop that's exactly what I expected to do when you turn it into a corner it goes exactly where you expected it to go and that is a philosophy that will translate across normal daily boring driving and driving fast um if you're trying to just be comfortable and just drive gently and you give it gentle inputs it moves gently and if you're trying to be aggressive and go have some fun it'll be fun uh and that linearity gets you that all modern all-wheel drive systems 99% of all modern all-wheel drive systems will drive two of the wheels all the time directly off the transmission and then the other two wheels get driven by a clutch sort of on demand uh that idea has been around for 20125 years they used to be pretty dumb and reactive where you would spin the primary drive Drive wheels and then it would engage a clutch and send power to the other other end and that was good for not getting stuck getting out of a snowy situation but it was terrible for driving Dynamics because you lose control and then regain control um as our control systems have gotten faster and faster and our Precision of how how exactly we control that clutch has gotten better and better we can do much more sophisticated things with that same concept of driven wheels and secondary Wheels um so there's two two different things that go on when you send torque to your secondary Wheels uh as you lock up that clutch you make those front rear wheels go the same speed which of course makes car want to go straight um and if any amount of preload on that clutch will create a little bit of of damping when the car tries to rotate when it's yaws right so managing the trade-off of uh torque split versus yaw damping um started off as a a managing a negative and has evolved to where the the Y damping control is actually one of the most useful tools that we have it's now a positive point that we can use the all-wheel drive system to adjust the Y damping of the vehicle um so for example the way we basically balance that is we've got three algorithms in in the system that are are looking at the the allo drive system from three different angles there's one that's trying to predict uh which tires are going to have the most grip and send the torque there and you can predict that pretty easily because the amount of traction you have is the the me of the Surface Times the normal force being pushed down on it we don't know the me of the surface but we know how hard each tire is getting pushed down indirectly by knowing how heavy the car is and knowing where the center of gravity is in the wheelbase and just looking at the G sensors the the weight shifts forward or back uh we can calculate the load on each tire and send torque where where it's likely to have the most grip now if we get in a split M situation we can't predict that so we're also of course watching if one wheel suddenly starts going faster we'll catch it within the fraction of a rotation and send torque to the other in and and react to that if we need to but both of those things are just looking at traction and if we happen to be in a situation where we've got a that torque transfer clutch locked up pretty hard and we're trying to turn the car is just going to under steer so we have a third algorithm that looks at steering input and trims down whatever torque split we have at that moment and reduces it in proportion to the driver's steering input so the car will carve a natural Arc through the corner um and that last algorithm has turned out to be really powerful for us for tuning and dialing in the steering feedback to make sure that what the steering is telling you is matching what the vehicle is going to do it's actually one of the last things that we tune uh as we got everything else behaving the way we wanted to and the steering there still you know some subtle spots where the steering's not quite telling me the right thing we'll tweak that all-wheel drive algorithm until it's it's it's communicating through your hands exactly how the car is going to go around the corner so yeah let's let's talk about active torque transfer and and and uh torque vectoring and all that kind of stuff because that's stuff that we we don't do very intentionally it's not like a cost saving we could torque Vector with the same Hardware that we use for kinematic posture control what we're trying to do is make the car carve through a corner in a certain very predictable natural way where the g-forces and the ya motions that you feel come from the front tires turning building up load pitching the car forward you the the the sequence of load transfer through this the chassis is consistent and predictable and makes it easy for you to control the car there are cars that have uh torque factoring systems where you'll go into a corner you'll do a certain thing you'll reach the limit and suddenly some yaw comes out of nowhere and it does more I don't personally mind that I think that's fun but I'm a rally driver right I like you can you can expand the envelope beyond what you expected to do but what we're after is completely predictable Behavior so we want to get that extra margin by making the original existing load path uh through the suspension make that work better so one of the things we do is the the kinematic posture control where we're keeping the rear suspension in the middle of its stroke uh through the higher G uh um Corners so what that's doing is it's looking at the difference in wheel speed between the inside and outside rear tires and and it's figuring out how tight a corner you're going through uh by by that uh and then it's dragging the inside brake just a touch if we drag the inside brake a lot we get torque factoring uh we increase introduce a yaw moment but we're not dragging it enough to do that you actually you know watch the data with and without The Brak and there's no change in the ya moment but what we're doing is just enough to P pull down on the rear suspension uh because we have anti-dive geometry that that helps prevent dive that same geometry just pulls the inside rear down a little bit and that keeps the suspension in its more neutral uh posture through the corner reduces body roll of touch um but mostly what it's doing is making the car behave more predictably through the corner your priority isn't NE necessary the most Nimble feeling car but it's the most linear feeling car right the most Nimble feeling car is a synonym for the most Twitchy feeling car those those are two sides of the same coin what we want is is the car that does exactly what you're asking of so we intentionally have relatively slow steering because we need resolution so the driver can make mid Corner inputs and they're not they're not Twitchy if you have a there's a there's a trend in a lot of cars you have really fast steering racks because electric power steering sort of opens up these possibilities but if you have a really fast steering ratio to keep it from being Twitchy you have to add a lot lot of damping to the software so that so that you don't a little quick input doesn't translate through to the tires that damping blocks any feedback from the tires um so what you're feeling through your hands is not what the tires are doing it's the damping algorithm that you're feeling uh and we want to run as little damping as we possibly can so you have a chance to understand what the tire is doing and that's what tells you where the car is going to go um if we run the the low damping setting that we have on our steering with a quick 13 to1 steer steering rack then when you sneeze you're going to end up in a ditch right so that's that's why we stick to a more traditional slower steering rack give you adjustability and predictability through a corner is it Tumi time Mark yeah give it to me and I need boost mode too I put it into put past the D for boost mode I've been boosted 4 cylinders pH we're in the model that I think most people are going to buy because the fuel economy benefits this is not the inline six that I've driven essentially every every iteration of this car Turbo S regular inline six and now this phv I'm going to put it back into and why are we in the phv now Jack because our Turbo S pre-production press car that we got a couple weeks ago wasn't right and during the launch program I focused on shooting interviews with everyone who made this car so hopefully by the time you get to this section of the video if you've heard from all the tumis themselves and the Tumi dogs and everyone associated with this car at this point their their house cleaners yeah everybody their personal masseuse like we I have to put this out there because we're a Mazda sympathy I er uh and uh I really like the brand it's a brand that doesn't have a lot of resources and maximizes everything that they do and you know there's a lot of excuses that you can make for a team that works as hard as they can or they don't have 500 people to to work on one thing yeah they're not a Toyota they're not a Toyota they're not a Ford they're not a GM they consistently turn out the best thing that they can do with the resources and you know I'm already setting this up to make a lot of excuses so far all right cx90 everyone's asked me and we've heard from everybody how does this thing Drive what do you think about it uh so I don't have as much time in it as you I've driven the Turbo S in this and one of the reasons why as you already stated I couldn't release a video on the Turbo S because I wasn't particularly sure that there wasn't something wrong with it from the cross traffic alert system malfunctioning thinking there were cars always there when there's nobody around still in this pH uh so there software weirdness uh there's drivetrain growl when you turn and accelerate there was a vibration through the entire car that felt like something was loose or vibrating uh and then you know there there was other things so I'm just I gave it a pass and the ride quality was I I don't know what was going on with it but we sent it back and sent it to the dealer to see what was up so this car is the replacement for it and I will say let's start with the body control and handling and I know Dave is going to be mad cuz we're not on some Canyon Road with this thing but this is a reality of what people but I did drive the Turbo S in San Francisco on his Drive route okay and how was it it's a very uniquely Mazda product okay what I mean by that is they care more about linearity of inputs and that everything feels as Progressive and as whatever their acronym is hor and Rider as one as possible most of Jin by Tha oh thank you Jin By Thai and the Sichuan s they care more about their principles than necessarily building a car that is what their buyers are looking for typically people in this segment like the minivan driver in front of us are looking for something soft something isolated and something that feels Nimble because the steering is so slow in this car and yes you can make mid Corner Corrections which Dave talked about you know most people don't get give a right they want it to feel fast in the front end and the fact that you have to go like you know you have to give it almost a full lock of turn to get into a basic Corner the steering feels very slow yes it's linear is and it's easy to make adjustments but the front end doesn't feel fast because they've prioritized minimal headbob and you know the worst case example is like the grand Highlander or the tell you ride you do a lot of secondary motions this car they didn't want to have that problem at all so this the ride is it really is shockingly stiff for a big three row SUV is it punishing no but we have a cross Trek at the same time as this thing brand new cross truck and that thing rides better than this does which is kind of surprising I I will say that it is with all due respect that philosophy does not work on this it it does not work it's not the right product to have that type of DNA baked in and I think it's one of those where you have to swallow your pride and realize that this needs to to be it needs a different philosophy in suspension tuning and ride control the body control is good but as soon as you get on a bumpy road like out here in the Midwest Michigan and Illinois wherever you hit those small like sudden impacts the high frequency like impact of this car is really really jarring it remind the only other SUV to me that rides equally or if not worse and a lot of it is body structure was the XC90 that car felt like the front and the rear end weren't screwed together completely it felt like there was just so much shock wave through the body this does a better job isolating you out but it also has a lot of like high frequency impacts that go through your body and it it doesn't feel like what it should be doing is isolating all of that out for a car like this you shouldn't be feeling it you should be floating more and it doesn't uh this the Counterpoint is is yes when you get it into the twist of your roads it handles great the body controls good you don't float around but that's like for most people 5% the other 95% is probably like 1% a three row that you're going to use for your family yeah you you want to be isolated out and you're just not enough in here and I think it's a big problem and probably you have the same problem that Toyota did with a grand Highlander when you deal with one shock damping profile you don't have a dual valve design shock you don't have adaptive dampers where you can you can play with the software part of it you can go soft or you can go firm so you're stuck with this one and they chose it to to have this better body control at the sacrifice of overall Comfort I don't know the interior and exterior of this car are beautiful I think it's a very pretty car I like the fact that they've gone to rear whe Drive architecture but you don't notice it you can't tell I mean honestly like when you're normally driving 95% of the time my big issue with this is I've spent just a marginal amount of time in two trim levels and I feel like I'm thinking way more about it than should be I feel like there's I should instantly just have a sense like a lot of other cars that oh the ride quality BLS pilot when you pilot it handles well it rides soft it does all the three row SUV things and then when I drive it the drivetrain disappears into the background which in the two cars that we drove it doesn't on this it does weird things jerking and like lift off like almost knock or shutter sometimes um there's weird programming things that the drivetrains do and the inline sticks and in this um just hesitation or bucking I mean there's so many little things here that I don't feel like they have completely sorted out yet that um it's it's hard because I had high expectations like it could be the other thing you know rear wheeel drive architecture uh New Generation inline six you hear all these things like great interior beautiful exterior for a crossover SUV and then you get in here and you're like man they need another like four or 5 years of development so like like sorted I'm not saying that in a bad way but it just it doesn't align with like some of the other brands where they have all these little things sorted out they don't it doesn't feel like that here let's talk about drivetrain so the inline six it is very smooth and for the class of car it competes in both in the let's call it in the 40,000 to the mid-50s it does a good job right it has more character than say like the MDX V6 yeah is it as refined as like the b58 no it's not but it's at a different price point the hybrid in this car does return decent fuel economy you're getting 30 m per gallon which is really good in a three row and when you're moving you don't really notice the hybrid Tendencies of this you don't really think about the fact that it's got a four popper versus a six or the handoff between electric and gas yeah that's really smooth actually but when you are in creeping in traffic in that 1 to 2% throttle application you feel it you feel in a way that you don't feel it in the Toyota products again that comes from the fact that they've been doing hybrids for a billion years and the and the gear boes they're really smooth when you're moving but when you creep in traffic or every so often it kind of lift off you know just the the subtle inputs the subtleties of like coming rolling or getting starter just kind of like the like you said like the slower traffic it it it doesn't go disappear like a lot of the other competitors it doesn't disappear into the background it's constantly doing things and this is one of the few cars or SUV or truck whatever you want to call it that I feel like I need an extended period of time driving this like not just a week I'd probably need a month before some of this just Falls away and it becomes normal to me but the the challenging part of that for me is that's not how most customers are going to be if you're not a Mazda fanatic you're you're going to get in you're going to love it if you love mazas but if you're a normal person and you get into this compared to like a Toyota and you have a one-day test drive other than the looks and the interior wowing you if you care about some of these other Drive ility things it might might set up some red flags I funnily enough I had a conversation with a lot of the engineers off camera about you know they asked me genuinely what I thought and I think one of the issues that they're going to have is their uniquely Moz the philosophy of everything's lener no gimmicks the modern car buyer doesn't give a they care about gimmicks right when they the reason why Drive modes exist in cars is so you can wow a customer with look it can go Ultra stiff and it can go Ultra Soft are either of those good who cares the consumer doesn't know any better steering is it linear most of the time steering needs to be fast in cars not because it's better but because it gives the illusion of being at nimble like a brand new BMW X5 X3 almost every car with a uh adaptive rack you know a variable rate rack you know where you get that quickness this doesn't have it and that's why I said like this philosophy what they're trying to do here just really doesn't work for this and it's not that they're philosophy's wrong it's just this requires a different approach that I don't think they have for this and I don't know if it's better or worse I really I don't want to judge it based on that because customers could like it but I you know I need to go back and really look at this like and nitpick certain things and look at the pros and the cons and come back to this car again and I hate to say it but it's one of those I really need to revisit yep with that Mark I think it's time for us to wrap up this incredibly long video thanks Jack beeps God final thoughts on the cx90 given the re-shoot the amount of time thinking about this and of course driving the phev and of course the inline 6 version we were left feeling a bit mixed after driving almost all of the three row competition from the pilot to the MDX the MDX Type S the X7 the Audi equivalence you know there's a lot of comp comptition out there now and I think what they're trying to do is find some Middle Ground between the luxury products and the commodity products and find this real sweet spot where they're trying to focus on driving enjoyment and driving linearity and of course offering you some luxury appointments while not making it feel so cookie cutter and in this Chase to do it I unfortunately I think some of the other brands have outpaced them in their own game when you drive the pilot despite it being a front-wheel drive architecture with a torque vectoring rear it just feels softer it feels like it rides better most of the time it feels more Nimble under that 70% driving threshold the MDX is very similar to that and you look at things like the toride and the Palisade which are ancient at this point they always ride softer but they are horrible to drive above 50% but I think the main takeaway is if you're buying a three row most of the three row expectations like the Highlanders the grand Highlanders is that they are really soft they don't need to be great driving because you're never doing that you're hauling you're you're towing you're putting people in it so I feel like a lot of the the tuning of this car sacrifices some of the things that three row people are going to care about in the chase of you know maybe making it more engaging to drive and it's really still not that engaging to drive uh and that was the big thing some of the drivetrain celebration was also a little bit off the the inline six version the performance version that we drove or the Turbo S uh there was more Drive Line shutter in that thing than I've ever felt in a modern car it felt like there was a lot of vibration either from the differential or the drive shaft there was just a lot of vibration that came from the engine and certain RPM that wasn't isolated out that's why we thought there was a problem the pH definitely smooth things out um but there's still strangeness in Transmissions tuning and calibration where there's the switch over point where you have electric assist to transmission like gear hunting sometimes it's not perfectly smooth and I think that's where of course in a first generation product despite as much work as you can put into it there's still some things to be sorted out there and philosophically you can't argue with Mazda this is what they want to do this is what's made them different from everybody else that the driving part the connectedness part I just think as a three row SUV this is is not the vehicle that really needs a lot of that and I think in some cases it's worse for trying to inject some of that in and I know that's bad but I feel like some of the other brands have figured out how to do it better where as a everyday vehicle like the CX9 was I think the CX9 even did a better job than the cx90 did at trying to make it that Cruiser that smooth Cruiser um easier to drive it felt softer most of the time but anyway you know this to me is probably one of the more interesting Vehicles I've ever driven in this price range and it's a testament to them as engineers and designers are really not trying to do the same thing we complain about this all the time every Brand's trying to copy and paste and do their do the same thing Chase popularity and Mazda is just trying to do their own thing now whether or not that's going to resonate with customers I don't know and I I don't even want to say but when you look at the the vehicle overall it is definitely a special experience and I will give them that it's something that you want to get in and if you're looking for that different three row that's not the same thing you're really going to appreciate what they did and I jack and I both really do love that about the cx90 I can't wait for their other products on this platform to see how they scale it out how they make improvements and we'll cover it then thanks for watching see you next video\n"