Mazda starts debates between automotive journalists. It doesn’t always fit neatly into our categories. The brand’s newest flagship, the CX-90, is a perfect illustration of the puzzle Mazda poses.
We roughly tend to divide the world’s cars into two categories: mainstream and luxury. Mainstream cars easily fit into a middle-class budget, perform well enough to serve nearly any task but without extreme athleticism, and offer comfortable surroundings and useful everyday technology but nothing you’ve never heard of. Luxury cars are a stretch for many to afford, bring sportiness to the everyday drive, and compete with each other to offer more advanced technology and plush luxury.
Mazda prices its cars like mainstream counterparts. However, the cars often outperform similar efforts from Chevrolet or Toyota. They don’t tend to surprise you with technology. But Mazda’s designers treat their cabins almost like luxury cars. They can be thoughtfully designed in a way more akin to BMW than to Ford.
That sometimes leaves us wondering if we need a third category that straddles the line between the two. I thought of it often during a week of test-driving the 2025 Mazda CX-90 plug-in hybrid (PHEV). It’s the largest and most expensive thing on the Mazda sales lot — the new pride of the Mazda fleet.
Mazda builds the car with an inline 6-cylinder engine or, in this plug-in setup, a 2.5-liter 4-cylinder engine and an electric motor that combine to produce 323 horsepower and travel up to 26 miles on electricity before using gas.
In some ways, it feels almost like a luxury car. In others, it’s decidedly more choice beef than grass-fed Kobe. But, at this price point, that’s a sales pitch.
My tester was the upscale Premium Plus trim, with luxury trappings like Nappa leather upholstery and heated second-row captain’s chairs. It carried an asking price of $60,000 after a $1,455 destination charge.
Grand Look
The CX-90 replaced the CX-9 in Mazda’s lineup late in the 2024 model year. That’s a tough spot to be in. Automotive journalists tended to love the CX-9. It was the sportiest 3-row SUV on the mainstream market for many years and brought sinuous curves to an often-dowdy-looking segment.
The CX-90, though, looks better. Designers gave it a grandeur the CX-9 lacked. An upright grille and slightly more slab-sided profile risked making it boxy, but subtle curves and jewel-tone paint jobs saved it from that risk.
A long hood and fender-mounted trim badges suggest luxury. It’s a more dignified, grown-up take on Mazda’s signature look.
Luxury Design Without Luxury Tech
The designers did an even better job on the interior. That starts with space — the designers kept the roof mostly flat rather than sloping it down at the rear, which gives all three rows sufficient headroom.
Careful choice of materials and artistic layout play a bigger role. The Nappa leather in my Premium Plus model was nearly as soft as what you’d find in a Mercedes-Benz or a Lexus and tastefully planned.
My tester had a black interior. Black cabins can swallow light, look cheap, and wear out quickly. However, designers included tasteful gray stripes and contrast-color stitching that lent it a more sophisticated feel.
Wide, straight-grain wood trim stained a matching gray broke the monotony. The dashboard features a decorative stitch borrowed from traditional Japanese bookbinding techniques — the kind of intentional element you expect to see in luxury cars, not mainstream models.
The electronics do a less-convincing imitation of a premium car. A high-mounted screen looks like a touchscreen, but most of the time, you control it with a puck-style controller on the center console. Oddly, it does turn into a touchscreen when running Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. That’s a puzzling choice.
You quickly get used to the user interface of any new car, so it’s rarely worth giving one much weight in your shopping decision. But I fail to understand why Mazda would build a part-time touchscreen. Some settings require more steps with the puck than they should.
That design quirk is, perhaps, the best illustration I’ve seen of Mazda’s strange quasi-luxury position in the market. In this car, you sit on heated and ventilated Nappa leather seats while using an out-of-date user interface to follow a 3-step process to change the radio station.
It wouldn’t hold me back from buying the car, but it’s a strange mix of upscale and midscale.
Still, the car has high-tech tricks. I once accidentally drove away with the charging flap open, and it closed itself when I hit 15 mph.
A Mixed Report on Performance
The promise of a Mazda is that it will outzoom a similarly-priced Honda or Chevrolet. It’s more fun from the driver’s seat thanks to torque-vectoring technology that gives most Mazda offerings a sportier feel than similarly priced competitors.
The CX-90 PHEV makes good on that promise, for the most part. Handling is precise for a 3-row machine. That’s not an easy technical feat. CX-9 owners will find the CX-90 similarly poised.
The gasoline engine and electric motor combine to produce 323 hp – more than most rivals and, on paper, enough to make this a performance car. So why did I say “for the most part” above? Because the car’s transmission proved distracting at low speeds.
It can sometimes hunt for the right gear around 15 mph. If you accelerate briskly, this isn’t noticeable. But, in stop-and-go traffic, it shifts too frequently with an odd thump as it pulls away from a stop.
Some drivers won’t care. Others might find it irksome. I found it made me a slightly more aggressive driver at neighborhood speeds, as I’d accelerate harder to avoid it. In a Mazda, that’s not a bad thing.
This Is Why Mazda Exists
I’d sum up the CX-90 this way — I’m predisposed not to like things like this, and I mostly enjoyed this one.
I tend to prefer smaller, sportier cars. My kids are grown, and the days of needing a vehicle this big are behind me. When automakers send me a 3-row family SUV to review, I take on the task as more work than play. But I found things to love about the CX-90 all the same.
Maybe that’s the best way to give testimony about a car that, let’s be honest, you’re going to spill yourself into after a long day of work just to go hunt for a parking spot close enough to school for the kid to lug their tuba inside for a concert you’re not excited to see. If the car is nice under those circumstances, designers have accomplished something.
The CX-90 is nice when you’re not looking for it to be. Add in 26 miles of all-electric driving, and you end up with a compelling alternative to a staid family hauler at a fair price.
