Mazda 2 Hybrid Review & Prices

If you’re looking at the Mazda 2 Hybrid and thinking that it all seems a bit familiar, well you’re not wrong. This isn’t really a Mazda at all, but a Toyota Yaris Hybrid wearing Mazda badges and sold through Mazda dealers.

How has that happened? There are boring details about a tech-sharing agreement between Toyota and Mazda in the background, but the short version is that Mazda now, at short notice, has a competitive hybrid model to offer buyers that are looking for a small, frugal car.

And frugal it most certainly ought to be. Mazda claims that the 2 Hybrid can average better than 70mpg, and our experience of the same 1.5-litre, three-cylinder hybrid engine in the Yaris shows that’s at least possible — even if your average daily driving will probably yield something like 55-60mpg more of the time.

Around town, you can smugly run about on electric power quite a bit of the time — some independent studies have shown that Toyota hybrids can run on battery power for as much as 80 per cent of an urban journey, so there’s no reason to suspect that just because there’s a Mazda badge on the front, this one will perform any differently.

It’s a nice, zippy engine, aided by a little bit of instant electric motor torque, so slotting into gaps in town traffic will be a doddle. The Mazda 2 Hybrid is also a very compact car — it’s just 3.9 metres long, shorter by quite a bit than rivals such as the Skoda Fabia and Honda Jazz — so ducking and diving around town is its natural habitat.

It should even be quite good on a twistier country road. Experience with the Yaris shows us that this basic setup has sharp steering and a willing chassis, so corners can be taken accurately and with some enjoyment too.

Motorways are less of a happy hunting ground for cars like the Mazda 2 Hybrid as the hybrid system can’t play to its strengths, so fuel consumption goes up (although nowhere near as much as it did with hybrids of the early-2000s). A bit too much road noise will likely spoil the refinement on long runs, too.

Interior quality won’t be an issue — as with the engine and body, Mazda has brought in and rebadged the cabin of the Yaris, so you know it’s been built to last, and both companies have exceptionally good reliability and quality records.

Equipment is good too — you get a seven-inch touchscreen as standard, with an eight-inch version for higher-spec models, and both come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Air conditioning is standard too, although you’ll have to pay extra if you want proper climate control. As standard, you get simple analogue dials for instruments in the basic Pure version, but higher-spec Agile and Select versions can be fitted with a digital instrument display that looks like it’s been built into a pair of binoculars. The Select even gets a heads-up display, which projects your speed and other information onto the windscreen.

There’s lots of standard safety equipment too. All versions get lane-keeping steering, collision-avoiding braking, and radar-guided cruise control.

Space is a bit of an issue. The rear seats are definitely on the tight side and you’ll find considerably more rear room in the likes of the Seat Ibiza or the cavernous Honda Jazz.

The boot is really small too. At just 286 litres, it’s only slightly bigger than what you’d find in the back of a three-door Mini hatchback, and dwarfed by the 380-litre boot of the Skoda Fabia. Mind you, that’s actually slightly more room than you’d find in Mazda’s own, petrol-only, Mazda 2 — which confusingly is on sale alongside the 2 Hybrid.

The Mazda 2 Hybrid is quite expensive, albeit well-equipped, and critically it’s slightly pricier than the equivalent Toyota Yaris Hybrid. It’s also much more expensive than a basic Ford Fiesta, and several thousand pounds more than the cheapest Skoda Fabia. In fairness though, neither of those models come with fuel-and-emissions-saving hybrid technology.

Is it worth spending the extra to get hybrid technology? And is it worth swerving away from a Toyota dealer to head over to Mazda? We’ll answer all that when we've had a chance to put the Mazda 2 Hybrid through a full carwow road test.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out our new car deals on the entire Mazda lineup as well as the used models, and remember that you can sell your own car through carwow to help you get the best value possible. Just Google ‘Help me carwow’ and we’ll be there for you.