A Mazda built in a somewhat unexpected place. . .

By Gary S. Vasilash

Madison, Alabama, is a city southwest of Huntsville, about 12 miles away, a quick trip on the I-565. It has a population of some 60,854, a nice bump up from the 56,933 in 2020.

The median household income in Madison is $118,132, compared with the national average of $75,149. Sixty-four percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with the national average of 34%.

Madison, Alabama, is a place you’ve not heard of, as there are about 200 cities in the U.S. with a population of about 60,000.

But there’s something else about Madison that you may not be aware of:

It is the home of Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, a $2.3-billion factory where some 4,000 people work at producing 300,000 vehicle per year.

The first vehicle produced in the plant was the 2022 Toyota Corolla Cross. Assembly commenced in September 2021. A few months later, the Mazda CX-50 build began.

(Fun fact: Huntsville is the home of the legendary Marshall Space Flight Center. There are two assembly lines in the MTM plant: Apollo and Discovery.)

Timing is everything, so it seems rather propitious for Mazda that it decided to put a hybrid under the hood of the CX-50.

And it would hard to believe that it is just a coincidence that the hybrid system—which includes a 176-hp 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine supplemented by three AC motors, so that there is a total system output of 219 hp—is one that is spec-wise just like the hybrid in the Toyota RAV-4.

(Curiously, the Corolla Cross is available as a hybrid, too, yet its system is different than the one that is used in the CX-50. The RAV-4 is built in the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. Although one might think that it would be closer to go from Apollo to Discovery (or vice versa), turns out the hybrid system isn’t sourced from Kentucky but is sourced from Japan.)

It has a continuously variable transmission. It is all-wheel drive.

The vehicle is stickered at 39 mpg city, 37 mpg highway and 38 mpg combined.

Style

From the standpoint of the exterior, the compact crossover has the Mazda sheet metal styling that shows skill in creasing sheet metal, but perhaps because Mazda has been using this approach for a while on its range of vehicles, it isn’t as visually striking as it once was. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage have become more visually striking and so the Mazda doesn’t have the standout looks it once had.

On the inside, especially as this is the top-of-the-line Premium Plus trim, there are things like leather for the seats and steering wheel. The instrumentation is laid out in a stylish and useful manner. There is a 10.25-inch display that is controlled by a large horizontally oriented knob in the center console. I would strongly recommend that if you’re interested in this vehicle and take it out for a test drive that you test drive that setup because some find it to be somewhat unwieldy.

Size

The CX-50 has a 110.8-inch wheelbase. It is 186.1 inches long, 75.6 inches wide and 65.8 inches wide.

So far as cargo: fold the second row and get 56 cubic feet. Behind the second row there are 29 cubic feet. As that is probably hard to visualize, simply know that there is plenty of room back there without folding the seats.

Assessment

The people in Mazda marketing probably cringe when people bring up the old “Zoom-Zoom” line.

If you’re interested in that, this isn’t the place to find it.

But if you want to get an efficient compact crossover, this is something that should be considered.