Ooophs, forgot about the Biante. So that makes my plus point comment on the Serena thread about 150k for 8 seater MPV a little moot.

Anyway in all honesty, if you've tasted a 2.4L engine, then you will find the Biante with the SkyActive 2.0L still lacking. Yes, same engine as on the CX5. Some people say ok, some say not.

But why worry... There's always the paddle shifters (yes, that's right) for that occasional zoom zoom spirited drive. And top speed is limited to 176km/hr. Listed consumption is 11.6 km/l for city drive and 14.9 km/l for highway.

I believe the Biante cannot have the seats folded flat to the floor. At least from the pics I see.



The Mazda5 can have the middle and back rows folded flat to the floor so that you can carry long stuff.

But for the purpose of transporting people, the Biante does it better and has more head room.

Have you thought about Mazda8? Only thing is it's not SkyActive yet. Still using the old 2.3L engine.

Hmmm. After seeing the pics from paultan.org, it seems you can lay the seats flat. But kind of dangerous to support furniture on your tender seats.

See config #6.

I only suggested Mazda8 because you looked at the tin kosong overpriced Toyota Previa (as in Toyota Estima launched by UMW?).

If I'm not wrong, EEV benefits only applies to CKD cars.

Actually, I don't see the logic that Nissan puts a cruise control on a car that is capable of cruising at maximum 127 km/hr !!!

If I'm not wrong, Mazda5 also does not have cruise control.

Anyway as of now, only the car manufacturer from China (Great Wall) is qualified the receive EEV status for manufacturing of the Haval M4 & H6 SUVs.

If stop for longer period then I'm fine. But the start stopping in short and frequent times, I rather switch it off too. Something is gonna give way.

I rather "waste" a little more fuel than having wear and tear to the starter motor. Nobody can say how much stress the start / stop does to the engine and I believe the engine is most stressed when it starts / stops but in this case it's already warmed up when it starts... I guess I'm still old school.

I believe like the rest of the Mazdas, it's still 10k km intervals. Don't know if you can still bring in your oil fully synthetic oil if you did not take the free service package.

This post has been edited by jchue73: May 27 2014, 10:44 PM

Mazda is very typical of having only 1 test car shared by many showrooms. A few days here and a few days it goes to some other showroom. It used to be like that and I'm guessing it's still the same.

There's lot of rumours that the SA uses customer's cars for test drive. That's why you find that most of them are very careful NOT to even let prospective buyers enter and touch cars that already belong to other customers. Very strict about that. I guess you can find comfort that the SAs do this because if it was the reverse, you would also like the SA to lock the car you have already booked and prevent it from being molested by would be customers.

Small time dealers cannot afford trailers because of small volume.