Mazda 2 ride & handling

The careful tuning that’s evident in the pedal weights and shift quality also shows itself in the way the car handles and steers.

It’s apparent that better judgement and greater attention has gone into Mazda’s development effort on this car than goes into the average small car.

The Mazda 2 handles in a wonderfully transparent, uncontrived way simply by being easy to guide and going precisely where you point it.

Kris Culmer

Chief sub-editor

The frequency of the 2’s gait is fairly low and its ride generally easy-going and well isolated – at higher speeds, at least.

Of far greater acclaim is the middling but constant weight and pace of the steering, the moderate but very well-balanced lateral grip levels and the gently controlled rate of body roll.

It’s rare to find a small car of such dynamic consistency, one that doesn’t jar your impression of it with at least one incongruent characteristic – a disproportionately pacy steering rack, for example. Developing cars that are so coherent to drive is expensive and not always considered important by supermini makers, but the 2 shows why it should be.

Like its bigger sibling, the Mazda 3, the 2 handles in a wonderfully transparent, uncontrived way simply by being easy to guide and going precisely where you point it.

And yet at typical British B-road speeds, the suspension hits the sweetest of strides, allowing the body to stay flat and undeterred while the struts, bushings and links below work away very harmoniously indeed.