General News
14 March, 2024
Trophies for Mazda’s best used medium cars, SUVs
MAZDA has once again taken the overall top spot in this year’s carsales best used car awards, earning a trifecta of trophies that span its passenger and SUV model range.
It’s the sixth consecutive year that Mazda has won the most amount of outright category awards of any manufacturer in the prestigious awards, repeatedly achieving three or more class victories each time.
This year’s best used medium car category goes to the 2018 Mazda6 Atenza, best used small SUV is reserved for the 2018 Mazda CX-3 Akari turbo-diesel AWD variant, and rounding out the award wins is the 2018 Mazda CX-5 Akera turbo-diesel AWD, which is named the best used medium SUV.
The carsales best used cars were selected using a combination of expert evaluation and data from Redbook.com.au and expert adjudication from the carsales panel, with each vehicle variant assessed on cost of ownership, safety, retained value and market appeal once the key criteria of age (six years old), distance (15,000km covered per annum) and equipment (electronic stability control fitted as standard) were met.
Mazda Australia managing director Vinesh Bhindi said: ”Securing these significant accolades no less than six times in a row is a fantastic achievement, and a glowing endorsement of our products and their quality and reliability. Purchasing a pre-owned Mazda has always been a sound decision, and we’re consistently proud and firmly committed to offering our valued customers great value, excellent service and dependable products year after year.”
Carsales editor-in-chief Mike Sinclair said Mazda was “once again the brand to beat and between the CX-3, CX-5 and Mazda6, there is something for almost everyone – a fuel-efficient and enjoyable drive, safe and comfortable strong-selling SUV and a roomy family car with real-world performance.”
Turbocharged power in both diesel and petrol in the Mazda6 Atenza plus an upgrade for 2018 embraced the safety of an all-round camera system, cylinder deactivation, improved ride comfort, reduced road noise and better steering feel tweaks were enough to bring the Mazda6 back into contention.
The 2018 Mazda CX-3 Akari diesel AWD was rated by RedBook at 39.3 points, which was slightly less than a couple of other finalists in its segment, but the CX-3 ‘zoom-zoomed’ its way ahead of those rivals with a judges’ score of 46 points, for a total of 85.3 out of 100. For best used cars 2024, the Mazda CX-5 earned a score of 41.1 points from RedBook and 46.0 points from the judges, for a total of 87.1 points out of 100 – slightly up on the previous generation CX-5’s score from the year before.
