On the road: Mazda CX-3 – car review

'It got pretty loud, with seven speakers. I like this - especially when I'm lost'

They say the compact crossover is a crowded market, but that's only in the sense that any market loosely defined (futures, greeting cards, animal fats) looks crowded. What exactly is the Mazda CX-3? The thing that is larger than the Mazda 2, or the thing that is smaller than the SUV? It's the latter, of course, because everyone loves the word "SUV", but it isn't large enough, least of all in the boot capacity, to warrant the term, even if it technically skims it.

The upside is that it looks neat and sharp. They are funny, Mazda, full of high design concepts: "Kodo" is the unified look across the styles. The CX-3 meets it by being aggressive yet sleek around the nose, tidy through the body, sheered off neatly at the back. Skyactiv is the technology, which they illustrate with a video that pits a CX-3 against a greyhound. It is weird nobody pointed out that most cars are faster than dogs.