The future of the Mazda CX-5 is uncertain despite its sales successes, Car Expert, as the Japanese manufacturer has commenced production for another two mid-sized SUV models, the CX-50 and the CX-60.
“I’m not sure whether we are going to introduce a [new] CX-5 or not,” current programme manager for the CX-5 Mitsuru Wakiie told the Australian publication. The CX-5 received a facelift in September 2021, which suggests that the C-segment SUV has several years still to go in its current lifecycle.
The CX-5 has been the brand’s biggest seller in 2022, with 365,135 units of the SUV delivered out of the 1,116,107 vehicles sold globally last year. In other words, the CX-5 accounted for nearly one-third of the Japanese brand’s total volume in 2022.
According to Car Expert, the CX-5 was also Mazda’s biggest seller in Australia last year with 27,062 units sold Down Under, second to the Toyota RAV4 which sold 34,845 units in Australia last year.
The US-market-only CX-50 is made at the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing (MTM) plant in Huntsville, Alabama, and is the first from Mazda to be built at the facility, while the CX-60 is a Japan-built, European-market offering that is the brand’s first plug-in hybrid that makes 327 PS and 500 Nm in combined output.
The CX-60 uses a longitudinally-oriented powertrain for a rear-wheel-drive-biased layout. By contrast, the CX-50 is on a transverse-engined layout that is shared with the CX-30 and therefore closer to the driveline of the CX-5.
GALLERY: 2022 Mazda CX-5 facelift
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