2017 Mazda Cx-5 Touring on 2040-cars

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Mazda struggles to meet demand on rising sales

For Mazda there's good and not-so-good news on the heels of strong US sales in 2012: demand is high - especially for the Mazda3, Mazda6 and CX-5 - but supply is low, TheDetroitBureau.com reports. That's partly because all Mazda production happens in Japan, since it ended its alliance with Ford and pulled out of a joint venture with the blue oval building cars in suburban Detroit last year.
In 2012, Mazda sales here jumped 26.4 percent, but 2013 sales through August have just been keeping pace with the overall US auto industry, increasing at a rate of 6.8 percent. Mazda North American Operations director of marketing and communications Jeremy Barnes says that sales have slowed because the company is facing challenges delivering products here.

Mountain goats provide full service car wash at national park

A group of plucky mountain goats in a Canadian national park apparently found the hardscrabble life of a common animal too tedious and tried their hands, rather tongues, at car detailing. YouTube user Darkrider1287 uploaded this video of the goats in action last week. His companion were driving along Maligne Valley Road in Alberta's Jasper National Park when a handful of young mountain goats descended on their Mazda. As the bewildered couple stopped their car, the goats surrounded them and proceeded to lick the vehicle clean. Knowing a good video opportunity when he saw one, Darkrider pulled out his phone to film the endearing and hilarious scene. For thirty minutes, the mountain goats licked the car clean from stem to stern. Paying little to no mind to the humans within, the goats cleared the Mazda of its accumulation of dust, bugs, pollen, and other tasty road grime. "So thorough!" said Darkrider as he narrated his video. "That's some tasty dust!" As the goats cleaned the car, other tourists stopped to laugh and take pictures of the strange scene. Eventually, a handful of cars and as many as ten goats had the Mazda surrounded. "Within a few minutes, we were crowded by both sheep and also tourists taking pictures of our funny plight," Darkrider stated in a comment on the video. "We stayed for about 30 minutes before moving on due to a rainstorm." So what exactly is going on here? A similar event happened to a National Geographic reporter in the same park in 2012. A park ranger told the report that the mountain goats were addicted to the salt used in Alberta to keep the roads from freezing. Even in August, salt can still make its way on to a car in the form of road dust. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. News Source: The Daily Mail, YouTube, National Geographic Auto News Humor Weird Car News Mazda Driving goat

Sweating the small stuff | 2017 Mazda CX-5 First Drive

The 2017 Mazda CX-5's door handles got their own design study. They got their own graphs, maths, and a team of people scientifically analyzing how humans interact with them. There was a whole to-do. And yet, you look at them back-to-back with their predecessors, a Spockian eyebrow reaching to the stars, and wonder what all the fuss was about. But apparently they're better. They're also perfectly illustrative of the entire effort to re-engineer and improve Mazda's best-selling model. At first, the 2017 Mazda CX-5 seems like a sensible evolution of its well-loved predecessor – there's sexier styling, a more premium cabin, and additional features, but the dimensions and engine specs look awfully similar. It certainly looks like one of those "the old car's great, let's not overthink the new one" redesigns. Except it isn't. Dig deeper and you'll see just how much meticulous work – from the door handles to the throttle response – went into making the new CX-5 a crossover that thoroughly trounces the majority of its competition. Take the efforts to make it quieter. According to Mazda's internal measurements, the sound-quelling improvements made for the CX-5's 2016 refresh already made it one of the quietest compact SUVs on the market. That apparently wasn't good enough. To what seems like an absurd degree, Mazda's engineers obsessively examined every nook, cranny, corner, and crevice to sniff out noise and eliminate it. Gaps were filled, insulation was injected, seals were added, air was redirected, glass was double glazed, and carpet replaced plastic coverings. It would seem that the Society of Persnickety Engineers is well represented at Mazda HQ. "I'm not sure how they found some of these," said Mazda vehicle development engineer Dave Coleman with a shake of his head, almost amused by the obsession and dedication of his colleagues across the proverbial hall in the sound-deadening department. (He goes over many of their enhancements in the video below.) And it worked. The new CX-5 is indeed incredibly quiet, even on San Diego's notoriously loud corrugated concrete freeways. It is quiet for a Mazda – a brand previously known for the exact opposite – and the entire segment. Even the fairly quiet 2017 Honda CR-V we drove on the same freeways on the way to San Diego couldn't match it. Actually, much of the driving experience can't be matched by a competitor.