All generations and engines together · 5,274 MOT tests in the 2025 data · typical mileage at age 7: 45k
Split by first-registration year. Cars registered in a changeover year can belong to either generation.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 4,954 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
Owners on Mazda enthusiast forums and Honest John's own reader forum report the rear sliding doors refusing to latch, or refusing to open at all, especially in cold or frosty weather. It's seen on both generations and is usually a dirty or frozen latch and worn door track rather than one specific broken part. A clean and re-lubricate of the latch, striker and track cures most cases; a door that keeps failing points to a tired latch motor or track, a few hundred pounds to sort.
The 1.6D fitted from 2010 shares its common-rail injectors with the same-era Ford, Citroen, Peugeot and Volvo diesels that suffer sudden power loss, and Honest John logged a car that broke down six times in a year before a failed injector was found, with a full injector job running to roughly £800 once out of warranty. The earlier 2.0 diesel (2005-2010) has a separate diesel-only gremlin: a patchy service history lets the DPF get stuck in permanent regeneration, which dilutes the oil and can damage the engine if it isn't caught. Petrol 1.8/2.0 cars aren't touched by either issue.
Owners report front lower arm and rear trailing arm bushes perishing from around 37,000 miles, plus a handful of front damper failures on 17-inch-wheeled cars as early as 35,000 miles. This lines up with the measured MOT data for the model, where suspension is the standout fault category against the class average. A bush and damper refresh is typically £150-400 depending on how much needs doing at once.
Some owners have had the windscreen crack right across after what looked like a small stone chip near the pillar. Honest John attributes it to the glass edge being left exposed at the screen pillars on this model, the same trait noted on the related CX-5. Not every owner sees it, and some put it down to bad luck with stone chips rather than a design flaw, so it's a check-at-viewing item rather than a given. Replacement is normal windscreen money, £200-400 depending on sensors and heating.
Scattered reports cover a seized rear handbrake mechanism, unexplained brake fluid leaks on cars as low as 35,000 miles, and one ABS module failure at 50,000 miles that was expensive to put right. These come up too rarely across the owner reports to call a firm pattern, but each one fails an MOT outright, so they're worth checking for even as one-offs.
Built from the two sections above.
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