Mazda CX-60 – Month 2

The Evil-Smelling Dog Mk2 is, at this stage, not so much a puppy as a giant termite. Though her predecessor was prone to raiding the recycling bin for the occasional still-a-micron-or-two-in-there cream carton snack, she would sleep quite happily in the Doggery alongside a shoe rack crammed with delectably whiffy chewables and never touch a single one.

The newcomer, however, eats not only shoes but absolutely anything else within ever-increasingly wide reach; mats, rugs, oven gloves, tea towels, newspapers, magazines, biros, pencils, baskets, hats, gloves, kitchen chairs, skirting boards, the missus’ reading glasses and the odd fly swat. And I do mean eats. Fabrics and nylon, for example, are so meticulously deconstructed to their constituent strands that the resultant pooh appears, of a piece, like a link of chipolatas…

Which is why ESD 2’s journeys currently all take place encaged in the back of the missus’ car, and the loadspace of the CX-60 is still firmly out of bounds. With two hooligans currently shambling their way off to Uni, though, that’s not to say the back of the Mazda hasn’t been busy.

I’m not entirely sold on powered tailgates, I’d rather save the money and weight; but I guess the time will creak over the horizon when I do consider them a boon. Once accessed, rather s-l-o-w-l-y, the CX-60’s rump proves something of an ergonomic mixed bag: The luggage cover stows neatly under the loadspace floor, but unfortunately won’t lie flush until you displace the electric pump gubbins that passes for a spare tyre from its slot in the tray. Irritatingly, that won’t sit securely anywhere else in said tray –despite a plethora of mysteriously empty sub-divisions- so has to come above ground into the netted sidewall pocket.

Rear seats may be collapsed by levers both on the outer seat backs and the loadspace walls, but you’ll have to push the rear headrests down (and possibly nudge the front seats forward a tad if you’re lanky) to clear the front seatbacks. And that still won’t give you a fully flat loadspace, unless you’re packing pachyderms or something else heavy enough to squash the seat base into total submission.

That’s the easy bit. Now…If only the CX-60 came with a built-in butler to carry all this clobber up three ruddy flights of stairs at the other end of the journey.