Automobile club Luxembourg

The japanese city car gets a sporty makeover

To celebrate the launch of the new Mazda2, a new 'Homura' special edition has been released to give the range an extra sporty feel. The exterior is recognisable by its black exterior mirror caps and black 16-inch alloy wheels, while the interior, not to be outdone, comes complete with black upholstery and door trim, red seat stitching and dark red air vent surrounds. Both the exterior and interior of this Mazda2 are attractive, but the dashboard is made mostly of hard plastics, which are admittedly well fitted, but still...

The driving position and the complicated instruments, which aren’t the easiest to understand, combined with the many badly placed blind spots, do nothing to facilitate driving, on the face of it, and it certainly takes a little getting used to.

However, that’s where the sportiness of this little 1.5L 90hp mild hybrid version of the city car ends. The poorly designed 6-speed manual gearbox, which is far too long, doesn’t really help matters, which is a great shame. That said, the rigid chassis, which has been revised and improved by the engineers, over-steers really nicely, especially when you go to get some power in the revs.

Image source: © Mazda