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Fuel Economy / MPG »
7
GREEN | 7 out of 10
Gas mileage has been an advantage for the Mazda 5, but it's no longer a big gap between the Mazda's highway mileage ratings and the best of the bigger minivans.
A Honda Odyssey with a six-speed automatic, for example, can match the Mazda 5's EPA highway rating of 28 mpg (which applies to both the manual-transmission and automatic-transmission models). The Honda can't quite equal the Mazda's city ratings of 21-22 mpg, however--but it can carry eight passengers, versus the Mazda's six.
But we’ve seen significantly better real-world results in the Mazda. In one 420-mile, varied weekend drive of a manual-gearbox model, over two mountain passes, mostly highway driving plus some city miles, we averaged nearly 30 mpg.
Conclusion
The Mazda 5 earns good highway gas mileage ratings, but so do larger minivans.
