Car Review: Mazda 2 GT Sport

It’s an odd thing that a company that prides itself on making drivers’ cars should take as long as it has to imbue its already lively small hatch into a more obviously sporty proposition. Mazda has taken a little too long to inject some extra “zoom zoom”, to borrow its ad slogan, into its Little Mazda 2. It’s added a new variant now, though – the GT Sport, and it’s long overdue.

As a driving machine – leaving aside the overall age of the design – this variation on the Mazda 2 theme is about as good as anything else out there for the price. It’s not easy, by the way, to make a normally aspirated (ie non turbo-charged) petrol-engined front-wheel drive car deliver a satisfying drive. The Austin Mini Cooper, VW Golf GTi and Peugeot 205 were the classic machines which showed others how to do it over the past few decades – but their fame also points to the number of failed attempts to emulate them there have been along the way.

This Mazda isn’t going to be propelled immediately into instant classic status, but the company has rather proved the point – that it can make a decent job of producing a supermini with some sporting personality – a warm hatch, as they say.

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So back at HQ in Hiroshima they have been busy, taking the promising basic engineering of the Mazda and then boosting the power, tightening up the steering and (relatively sophisticated) multi-link suspension, of course, and they’ve “added lightness” too, carefully taking weight out of the car so that it weighs in at less than a tonne – making it a featherweight in modern terms.

It works, and this Mazda stacks up in terms of tidy handling, performance and sheer enjoyment even against the latest benchmark model, the new generation Ford Fiesta. This generation Mazda 2 has been around since 2014 and the 2 is small by the current inflated standards of the supermini class, so I can see why buyers might overlook it, for which the obvious antidote is an hour or two behind the wheel, maybe including trying to navigate and park in congested cities, something that will confirm the advantages of a more compact package.

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The thing Mazda hasn’t done is throw good taste out of the window. Unlike some competitors such as Citroen C3, Fiat 500, DS3, Mini, Ford Fiesta and Skoda Fabia there’s no room for customisation, no lairy paintwork, and no stupidly massive and heavy alloys with rubber band-thin tyres.

Nor is it as wilfully wacky as a Nissan Juke, which, incidentally, like all SUVs or crosssovers has its centre of gravity too high. The Mazda is as sober as a hearse, and all the better and more distinctive for it. I’ll admit that it’s cheaper and easier to make cars without offering the consumer such extravagant choice, but the fact remains that you don’t have to have clashing roof, body, door mirrors and grille to be able to enjoy your car, and, one way or another, you’ll find yourself paying dearly for such frippery.

The Mazda offers decent value, comparable in trim and equipment with a titanium spec New Fiesta and a thousand pounds or so cheaper. So you get, as specced on our test car, heated (leather) seats, a handy “head-up display” (where your speed and other vital data is projected so as to be just below your eye line as well as on a conventional dash), a reversing camera plus sensors, and a snicky 6-speed manual gearbox.

I’m guessing it will be more reliable and longer lived that’s most of its turbo- and super-charged three-cylinder highly stressed rivals too.

The engine is a less obtrusive when you use that high revving potential, but it never loses its grip and there’s a calmness about the way it serves up its power that you simply cannot get in “hotter” machinery (try the latest Honda Civic Type R if you want to meet a real beast).

Mazda’s basic theme at the moment is to try to get the best out of conventional engineering; they’ve not done much on the electric front and, for the moment, the rotary engines they used to be so famous for have been shelved (though may return one day in a petrol-electric hybrid). The Mazda 2, just to be clear, may be great fun to drive but there’s nothing revolutionary about it.

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You might even say aspects of this the Mazda are bit dated. The restrained though neat styling could do with some attention from the firm’s gifted designers to give it some extra presence and a more muscular sort of shape, not easy with a small hatch, I’ll grant you. Plastics and trim quality could be usefully improved and the inadequate touch screen is overdue for replacement with a proper iPad-type arrangement that will react with the same alacrity as the mechanicals do to its users’ inputs.

You’ll find it a less wondrous place to sit than, say, a new Clio or Fiesta, and a slightly less solid one than a Polo, let alone a BMW 1-series (a little dearer, that option), but it is still a perfectly rational and respectable choice for a buyer seeking some traditional Japanese virtues – high-revving (to around 6,500 rpm), economical, reliable, smooth, intuitive.

The shame of it is that this particular model must be due for replacement in the next couple of years, and it’s been such an unsung hero for so long. Even by Mazda, which is even now most famous for its excellent roadster the MX-5. Think of the Mazda 2 GT Sport as an MX-5 with a roof and a couple more seats, and you’ll get something of its spirit.