Distraction stations
Pass the swear jar. By Jordan Butters
one likes a nervous passenger. Especially one who keeps telling you to pay attention, grabs the steering wheel, jabs at the brakes, and screams BRAKE for no good reason. The CX-60 is that nervous passenger. There are times when the CX-60’s numerous safety systems work well – the blind-spot monitoring is useful, as is the warning you get if you’re about step out of the car into the path of a bin lorry. But so much of its nannying is annoying, verging on dangerous.
On a long drive down to Devon, it would periodically tell me I was distracted when I wasn’t. This warning itself is quite distracting, so in a way I guess it wasn’t wrong. Furthermore, the lane-keep steering-assistance system aggresNo sively yanks the car back into the middle of the lane should you wander slightly. At times, I’d be midway through correcting my path myself, and my efforts would combine with the car’s nervous disposition to send me too far the other way. This issue worsens on A-roads and smaller lanes, where you can find yourself fighting the CX-60 during completely normal driving; God forbid you try to take the most direct line through a clear kink in the road! It can be switched off by rummaging through the sub-menus, but needs re-doing at the start of every journey. On some motorways the car is convinced the speed limit is 30mph. There are also residential streets where it advises me I can do 80mph – not a speed limit anywhere in the UK.
In Ilfracombe, with its narrow, winding, hilly roads, I found myself more at risk of being rear-ended by another vehicle than hitting anything myself, with the CX-60 seeing parked cars on a corner as a serious collision risk before slamto ming on the brakes suddenly. BRAKE, the car yells at me, while I yell something far less savoury back. If there was a swear jar in the CX I’d be halfway to my dream 997 GT3.
Mazda CX-60 Homura e-Skyactiv D MHEV 3.3 Month 2
The story so far
Slightly unconventional, slightly classy crossover, here tested with a diesel mild hybrid
★ Safety is paramount
- But | do know how to drive, | think?
Logbook
Price £50,705 (£54,357 as tested) Performance 3283cc diesel six-cylinder, 251bhp, 7.4sec 0-62mph, 136mph E ciency 53.3mpg (ocial), 44.0mpg (tested), 138g/km CO2 Energy cost 15.7p per mile Miles this month 855 Total miles 5251