Quiet and capable

Mazda has given the CX-3 a mid-life update. took it on an epic road trip across Norway to put it through its paces.

Norway is a magnificent country. Thousands of miles of scraggly coastline, epic mountains around every corner, and countless waterfalls cascade down rocky faces as glaciers melt in the relative warmth of summer.

With twisting roads clinging to mountainsides and winding along picturesque fjords, you’d have to be pretty confident in your product to launch a compact SUV here.

But that’s exactly what Mazda has done with the recently facelifted CX-3. It comes with a wide variety of petrol and diesel engines, an all-wheel-drive option for those who need extra all-weather grip, and improved refinement. mountains towards Trondheim. I’d say it was taking the scenic route, but it’s impossible not to around here, so indirect is probably a better description.

There’s a definite prehistoric feel to the place, with the juxtaposition of impressive feats of modern engineering and copious service station stops advertising hot dogs (Norway is obsessed with hot dogs).

One such feat is the Laerdal Tunnel. At 15 miles long, it’s the longest road tunnel in the world and has three small refuge sections to break up the monotony. first overnight stop in Loen. Next day we continue north towards Trollstigen, loosely translated to mean Troll’s Ladder. Sporting 11 hairpin bends, the road performs more U-turns than Theresa May in a wheatfield as it descends into a valley.

Waterfalls crash beside the road, leaving a fine mist in the air and a sodden road surface even when the weather is fine. The CX-3 shouldn’t feel as much at home here as it does, handling aggressive turns from an over-enthusiastic driver without fuss.

The final landmark on our drive across this epic landscape is the Atlantic Road. Search online for “best driving roads” and you’ll often spot one of the bridges on this five-mile stretch of tarmac appear in the image results. It curves upwards from a rocky outcrop in the ocean before diving back down into another. After nearly 20 hours of driving across two days, we pull into our final stop in Trondheim.

It’s an industrial city that’s undergoing renovations to bring it into the 21st century, with old brickwork buildings transformed into riverside cafes and clubs.

It gives us a quiet moment to mull over this fantastic drive. The Mazda CX-3 has been an excellent companion – quiet, comfortable and capable, it’s handled everything we’ve thrown at it.

Many compact SUVs would have become undone by these roads, which are almost never flat or straight and should be exhausting to drive.

New G-Vectoring technology controls the pitch of the car in a corner to reduce body roll, improving the handling and reducing the driver’s workload – it works.

And as for the scenery, there really is nowhere quite like Norway. It’s notoriously expensive, but boy is it worth it for the views alone.