• Freestyle doors make it more practical than a three-door…
• But access to the rear seats remains awkward
• Rear passenger visibility and spaciousness are limited

How much space is there?

Not a lot, frankly. Even with the backwards-opening ‘Freestyle’ doors at the rear, access to the rear seats isn’t straightforward, and the available space feels cramped on headroom and very short on legroom. The MX-30 takes up about as much room on the road as the petrol-engined Mazda CX-30 SUV, and the CX-30 is a much more practical choice for family buyers (albeit also a small one).

The front seats feel more cocooning (if we’re being generous) and cramped (if we’re not) than most small SUV buyers may expect, too. It’s clearly been a conscious decision by Mazda to put sporty style ahead of functionality here.

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Boot space and storage

With the rear seats in place, the MX-30 has 366 litres of boot space including underfloor storage. High-spec models with the Bose hi-fi system lose some of this thanks to the sound-enhancing sub-woofer.

Fold the rear seats over – they’re split 60:40 – and maximum capacity is up to 1,171 litres. Scraping back some functionality points, the seat backs lie almost flat, creating a useful load space for longer items.

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Is it easy to park?

At less than 4.4m long and 1.8m wide (not including the door mirrors), the MX-30 is a compact vehicle, so should be easy enough to tuck into most parking spaces. However, it’s also not the easiest of SUVs to see out of, with broad pillars and narrow window openings.

Fortunately, Mazda fits front and rear parking sensors as standard, alongside a reversing camera, blindspot monitors and a rear cross-traffic alert system.

Safety

• Five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP
• Battery is sited in its own protective structure
• Mazda i-Activsense includes collision avoidance tech

One of the factors that ensures the MX-30 scores a top-grade five-star rating from the experts at Euro NCAP is that much of its safety equipment is standard right across the range, a move we wholly approve of.

Consequenty, all MX-30s include the following safety gear:

• Seven airbags
• Blindspot monitoring (BSM) with rear cross-traffic alert (RCTA)
• Driver attention alert (DAA)
• Emergency lane-keeping
• Hill-hold function
• LED front and rear lights
• Adaptive cruise control that functions down to a complete standstill
• Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian detection

Further safety equipment is limited to the range-topping Makoto model:

• Driver monitoring camera to detect fatigue
• Front cross traffic alert (FCTA)
• Autonomous emergency braking when in reverse

Watch the Euro NCAP crash test video