2025 Mazda CX-70 D50e Azami review

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2025 Mazda CX-70 Azami

The Mazda CX-70 may look familiar – sharing its bodywork with the CX-90 – but philosophically, it’s a very different vehicle.

Where mainstream brands like Hyundai, Nissan, and Toyota all equip their road-going large SUVs with seven seats or more, Mazda has followed the lead of prestige brands like BMW and Lexus. Instead of packing more into the CX-70, Mazda offers less – well, fewer seats – leading to an approach that feels more targeted to particular buyer demographics.

Of course, being closely related to the CX-90, the CX-70 isn’t too surprising. It offers the same expansive dimensions, the same interior styling and technology, and the same powerful six-cylinder mild-hybrid engines.

Could the Mazda CX-70 be the big SUV you never knew you were looking for? We spent a week with the top-spec diesel model to find out.

How much is a Mazda CX-70?

Unlike the seven-seat CX-80 and CX-90 ranges, with a broad spread of models encompassing a wide range of price points, the CX-70 comes in just two high-spec model grades.

The entry point to the range is the CX-70 GT that starts from $75,970 with a petrol engine or $77,970 with a diesel. The flagship CX-70 Azami grade asks for $82,970 with a petrol engine and $84,970 with a diesel (all before on-road costs).

Sitting at the higher end of the Mazda range means equipment is comprehensive. Both grades come with features like 21-inch alloy wheels, adaptive LED headlights with auto high-beam, a panoramic sunroof, hands-free powered tailgate, keyless entry and push-button start, tri-zone climate control, power-adjustable seats and steering column, heated front and rear seats, leather seat trim, rear door sunshades, and quite a long list of other small details.

The CX-70 Azami adds in additional equipment like two-tone alloy wheels, nappa leather interior in a choice of black or burgundy, front seat ventilation, a frameless rear-view mirror, body-coloured bodywork (on the lower doors, wheel arches, door handles and mirrors), and extended interior ambient lighting. It's not a lot more, but the small uplift in interior presentation makes the Azami look and feel more special.

The Azami grade can also be optioned with an SP package for $3500 that brings tan-coloured quilted nappa leather, a two-tone steering wheel, and a suede-look dashboard insert. It's not fitted on this test vehicle, and feels like a lot to spend for some seat quilting and a divisive colour choice.

If you're shopping at the big end of town, it's also worth pointing out that Mazda's internal competition sees the seven-seat CX-80 undercut the CX-70. It has a slightly shorter and narrower body, which impacts passenger space, though only slightly.

The CX-80 Azami comes with the same petrol and diesel engines (although the petrol is slightly less powerful) priced from $74,150 and $76,150 respectively. The CX-80 is also available as a plug-in hybrid priced from $87,200.

In the CX-90 range, the same circa $85K of the diesel CX-70 Azami buys you a CX-90 D50e GT diesel ($85,550), while moving up to a CX-90 D50e Azami costs $93,515. There are colour and trim differences, so the CX-70 and CX-90 are similar though not identical.

Step away from your Mazda dealer and you may also be looking at something like the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Like Mazda, Jeep has gone more upmarket in this generation, but without a diesel option buyers are left with a choice of petrol V6 or four-cylinder turbo plug-in hybrid engines.

Jeep's range looks a little like Mazda's with the availability of five- and seven-seat Grand Cherokee models. Unlike the CX-70 and CX-90 which share the same bodywork, seven-seat Grand Cherokees have a long wheelbase and longer bodywork.

Lexus has always had a foot in the five-seat SUV camp with the RX range, though dimensions of the current RX are noticeably smaller than the CX-70 (at 4.9m long versus 5.1m). Again there's no diesel option in the RX range, but there is a frugal closed-loop hybrid, a performance turbocharged hybrid or a regular non-hybrid turbo-petrol in between.

If the option of seven (or eight) seats still appeals to you, the Hyundai Palisade is a surprisingly upmarket option. It offers big dimensions, like the CX-70, with a choice of naturally aspirated petrol V6 or four-cylinder turbo-diesel engines.

Opt for the top-grade Palisade Calligraphy Black and pricing starts from a slightly lower $79,988 plus on-road costs, and while you get a seven-seat layout (with middle-row captain's chairs), power and torque aren't quite a match for Mazda's six-cylinder.

MORE: 2025 Mazda CX-70 price and specs

How big is a Mazda CX-70?

Let's start with the business end of the CX-70 – the boot.

Surprisingly, despite not needing to accommodate third-row seats, the boot is slightly smaller in the CX-70 than the CX-90 and Mazda hasn't reconfigured this space into a custom, flexible, storage-first space. That feels like a big miss, and lots of tell-tale carryovers from the CX-90 remain.

Mazda quotes 598 litres of storage space for the CX-70 (a CX-90 with the third-row folded has 608L). There's a foam tray where the third-row seats used to live, and you can see the armrests and cupholders in the sides of the boot – despite serving no purpose here.

On the plus side, you get bag hooks and seat release buttons in the boot, plus a household power socket and 12-volt barrel plug. Still, as a dedicated load carrier, it would have been nice to see a reconfigurable boot floor, some added dividers, or load restraints built in.

The second-row seats are spacious, with plenty of width for three across. They also slide fore and aft, so you can free up additional boot space or bring little ones closer to the front if need be. The backrests also recline (manually) to get the seating position just how you'd like on long trips.

Rear sunshades, a fold-down armrest, heated outboard seats, and dedicated rear climate controls ensure the CX-70 doesn't miss out on much in the rear. Unlike the CX-90, though, there's no option for individual captain's chairs with a console in between. As a more luxurious option in a car not strictly tasked with family duties, this feels like another miss.

As with the rear seats, the front seats are spacious, though surprisingly don’t make the best use of the available width. A wide console means front seat occupants will sit with legs jammed into the console. I'm neither tall (at 169cm) nor long-legged, and with my foot on the left footrest, my knee was pressed firmly into the console.

As nicely as the CX-70 presents with soft nappa leather and stitched adornments on the dash and doors, the garish-looking metal trim between the seats and dark plastics on the door trims don't hit the same high notes as the CX-90's stunning chrome brightwork and real wood.

The available burgundy trim is a must-have, though. It helps add some additional upmarket appeal to the interior.

The CX-70 includes the auto driver adjust system that uses the driver's height details to automatically set the driving position. For me it felt far too close, with arms hemmed in – but I do have long monkey arms relative to my height, so this could work better for other drivers.

With plenty of electric adjustment for the front seats, dual-position driver's memory, seat heating and cooling, a heated steering wheel, and a climate concierge function that matches seat temp to climate temp, based on external conditions, it should be easy to get comfy in the CX-70.

Unfortunately, the interior fans kick up a real racket, and if you leave the climate control on auto, it defaults to a high fan speed and the air conditioning in the car we tested seemed to struggle to maintain cabin temperature, even on mild days. The seat cooling fans are similarly noisy – but they draw a significant amount of air and feel much more effective as a result.

Does the Mazda CX-70 have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?

The Mazda Connect infotainment system doesn’t always draw universal praise, but I'm a big fan of the system, and its very clever and intuitive user inputs.

Displayed on a 12.3-inch display, Mazda reserves touch inputs for the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto phone mirroring (available via a wired or wireless connection). The native Mazda system uses a rotary controller on the console.

Because of the way Mazda lays out its internal menus, it's an easy system to use, plus satellite volume, skip, and shortcut buttons to music, navigation and home make it easy to jump between functions. Within CarPlay those functions can be used to move within the CarPlay ecosystem too.

Alongside CarPlay and Android Auto, the CX-70 comes with Bluetooth, AM, FM, and digital radio, and embedded satellite navigation. Access to Mazda Connected Services is also included with a three-year complimentary connection.

With Mazda Connected Services, the car can be linked to a smartphone for access to remote vehicle status checks, door lock and unlock, vehicle location info, stolen vehicle tracking, and more.

The CX-70 also comes with a clear head-up display. This offers info on speed, turn-by-turn navigation prompts, blind-spot info, and speed limit displays. It's also able to be set much lower than similar systems in other cars that often leave shorter drivers looking at projected info halfway up the windscreen.

The display complements the 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, although this only provides limited personalisation. There's a choice of trip info displays in a traditional three-dial gauge cluster, or a driver-assist display with cruise control on.

There are no different displays for drive modes, and with cruise control on, the cluster can't be switched from the driver-assist mode.

To keep devices charged, a short tray in the centre stack houses a wireless charge pad, although most modern phones only just fit, and if you accelerate or corner too keenly your phone will slide straight out.

Is the Mazda CX-70 a safe car?

The Mazda CX-70 has not been crash-tested in Australia by ANCAP, and because this model isn’t sold in Europe, there’s no equivalent Euro NCAP crash result either. The CX-90, which is the same vehicle structurally, also lacks an ANCAP result, so there’s no indication of how this vehicle may perform in a crash test.

Mazda has historically performed well in ANCAP assessment, and these models may join the ANCAP test regime at a later date.

What safety technology does the Mazda CX-70 have?

As one of the newest models from Mazda, the CX-70 comes with the full suite of available safety features.

All CX-70s come with autonomous emergency braking including pedestrian and cyclist detection, rear AEB and rear cross-traffic alert with braking, lane-keep assist and departure alert, blind-spot monitoring with safe exit alert and lane-change intervention, driver monitoring camera, tyre-pressure monitoring, front and rear park sensors, and surround-view cameras.

The CX-70 Azami also adds features the lower-grade GT doesn't come with like a 'see-through view' for the cameras, and Cruising and Traffic Support for the adaptive cruise control.

For the most part, Mazda's driver assist tech works as a backup for moments where attention might lapse, rather than trying to wrest control from the driver. It's easy to switch between adaptive cruise control and lane-centring cruise control, though I found the latter lacked usefulness.

With steering assist activated, the system is unable to assist on even gentle radius curves, and far too often on dead-straight roads, with perfectly clear lane markings the system would chime 'steering assist unavailable' not once, but three times in a row.

The lane-departure warning system comes with road edge detection, and on rural roads it can flag false alarms but doesn't take unnecessary evasive action. On the other hand, the driver monitoring system is calm enough to realise that drivers may need to look at their mirrors or glance at the instruments and doesn't immediately chide you for doing so the way some rival systems do.

How much does the Mazda CX-70 cost to run?

Mazda has stuck with a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty for the CX-70 range, and despite the brand's premium push, Mazda trails rival Japanese brands like Toyota, Honda, and Mitsubishi that offer up to seven, eight, or 10 years of warranty respectively via extension programs for cars serviced to each brand’s requirements.

The CX-70 diesel has shorter-distance service intervals of 12 months or 10,000km, while the petrol can run 15,000km before scheduled maintenance. Service costs aren't exactly cheap either.

The first five years of maintenance add up to $3298, and potentially more if you exceed 10,000km per year. If you were to run a Palisade diesel over the same period of time, service costs would be $2545, while a Lexus RX would cost $3475.

Looking at comprehensive insurance we were quoted $2241 per year using a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

Those same details for a CX-90 D50e Azami returned a similar $2298, while a Palisade Calligraphy Black Ink diesel was quoted at $2385.

Is the Mazda CX-70 fuel-efficient?

The CX-70 is a big SUV with a reasonably heavy kerb weight and a muscular engine – and yet official fuel consumption is more like that of a small car, rated at 5.4 litres per 100 kilometres.

The touring efficiency of diesel engines is well known, but even around town, we recorded a still surprising 7.6L/100km in stop-start city driving (where Mazda claims 5.8L/100km). After a week of weekday commuting, rural highway cruising, and a more spirited mountain road drive I had used an indicated 6.5L/100km.

With the CX-70’s 74-litre fuel tank, that works out to a potential touring range of over 1130km. That means the famed Sydney to Melbourne run could be completed with about a quarter of a tank left, or Sydney to Brisbane without needing to stop for fuel – though the need to fuel the family may see you stopping a few times along the way.

What is the Mazda CX-70 like to drive?

Mazda's overall set-up for the CX-70 is very mechanical. As more brands move to isolate steering and hand over driver controls to by-wire systems, Mazda has doubled down on the idea that driver and machine should work together.

It's a position that's likely to split opinion. For me it's fantastic. There's genuine weight in the steering and feedback through the wheel. Even with a substantial kerb weight, it's easy to know what each corner of the car is doing and how it puts power down.

Will buyers looking for a more prestigious and upmarket car want that kind of connection? Arguably the success of more road-focused Mercedes-AMG and BMW M Sport cars suggests there is an appetite, but even those models are distancing themselves from engagement.

Starting with the CX-70's inline six-cylinder diesel engine, it's a beautifully smooth and balanced unit. Often passengers didn’t even pick it as a diesel. There's some slight chatter at idle, but as you accelerate the engine noise becomes deeper and smoother.

As is so often the case for diesel engines, acceleration is all about mid-range torque with effortless rolling acceleration. The engine will still happily spin to its 5000rpm redline, which is surprisingly smooth, but really keeping in the peak torque band (from 1500 to 2400rpm) is the CX-70 diesel's sweet spot.

The wave of effortless force feels a lot like an old large-capacity V8 from the pre-turbo era. It's sure to click with certain buyers. Anyone looking to cover long open-road distances in particular will love the frugal running and on-tap overtaking potential.

The eight-speed automatic transmission is the same as you'll find in Mazda's CX-60 and CX-90, but ongoing revisions seem to have cleared up some of the jitteryness of the earlier models. It can be a little clumsy in situations where you switch from slowing to speeding back up still.

The difference here with most other premium SUVs is the use of a clutch pack between the engine and transmission. Most prestige brands use a smoother torque converter – a type of fluid coupling that irons out shunts and shudders.

For me, trying to reverse up my steep but short driveway seemed to confound the car. It would either slip the clutch or lunge into gear but couldn't quite find the middle-ground in between.

It's clever about gear selection on the go, and didn’t seem caught out in the wrong gear. There are manual shift paddles on the steering wheel, but these are just a little too slow to react.

Superb isolation from road and wind noise bolsters the CX-70's suitability as a cross-country tourer. Mazda works hard to keep cabin noise low, and it shows here.

Again, your personal take on this may determine the CX-70's suspension as too firm or just right. I can see a lot of people disliking the at times sharp ride.

The suspension finds a slightly-off balance of jittering over smaller fast-paced bumps, but then does a much better job of disguising long-stroke undulations. Tarmac lips and joins shake the cabin, but potholes rarely do.

For any bump, the CX-70 can't hide there's a moment of secondary movement before the car settles down. Again, this all falls into the very mechanical nature of the car, though. I'm not sure the target audience for big, plush SUVs is always going to be looking for that level of connection.

Can a Mazda CX-70 tow?

The tow rating for the CX-70 is a maximum of 2500kg with a braked trailer or 750kg unbraked. The ball weight limit is only 150kg though (instead of the full 10 per cent of towing capacity often seen), so depending on how your weight is distributed this can be a limiting factor.

The CX-70 Azami diesel has a 506kg payload, which is reasonable to accommodate four adult occupants plus luggage, but if you are planning to tow the ball weight needs to come off that payload.

Ultimately, the CX-70 might do the job for running your skiff to a boat ramp, but may not be the ideal caravanning companion.

Should I buy a Mazda CX-70?

It feels like Mazda is on the cusp of having a great vehicle with the CX-70, but it just hasn’t quite got there yet. The brand has a history of listening to owner feedback and making updates that count. In a year or two, the CX-70 should really hit its stride.

Right now, though, the CX-70 aims for prestige but lands a little short of the mark. The right ingredients are there, from the smooth and torquey engine to the spacious and high-quality interior, but the final cohesion of all those elements is still lacking.

With a little extra work on the ride quality, some fine-tuning of the steering assist, and a design change or two in the interior, the CX-70 could be a real threat to prestige SUVs almost twice its price.

For now, though, it's a little too niche. A small group of buyers after driving engagement will love it, but the masses may be a little more hesitant.

How do I buy a Mazda CX-70? The next steps.

With so many similar models to choose from in the Mazda large SUV range, the CX-70 could be the overlooked one. This means that if you don't need a seven-seat CX-80 or CX-90, you may be able to cut a deal on CX-70 floor stock.

Of the two available variants, the CX-70 Azami adds a few extra finishing touches to elevate it over the CX-70 GT. It's the one we'd recommend.

The diesel engine makes sense for anyone who regularly undertakes long road trips, but you may want to test-drive the petrol and diesel back-to-back to find the right fit for you.

You can also check out the full range of new and used Mazda cars for sale at Drive Marketplace. You can also build your own CX-70 on the Mazda website and find your nearest Mazda dealer.

If you want to stay updated with everything that’s happened to this car since our review, you’ll find all the latest Mazda news here. 

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