Rent Mazda CX-5 2023 in Dubai

Rent the Mazda CX-5 2023 in Dubai and you get a genuine mid-size SUV for close to economy-class money. We bring it to your door in one to two hours, so there's no rental counter to queue at. What makes this one worth a look is the gap it fills. It's roomier and better finished than the small crossovers most people default to, without the running cost or bulk of a full-size seven-seater. This page settles one decision: does the CX-5 give you enough space and road manners for a Dubai week, and where would a different car serve you better?

What you're actually renting

The CX-5 is the last of Mazda's KF generation, a body that ran from 2017 to 2024, so by 2023 it was a settled, well-sorted car rather than a first-year experiment. Under the bonnet is a 2.0-litre naturally aspirated petrol four making 165 hp and 210 Nm, driving the front wheels through a six-speed automatic. That's a conventional setup with no turbo and no hybrid trickery, which in a rental is a point in its favour. It just works, and it's cheap to feed.

The character is calm rather than quick. The 2.0 has enough for daily driving and for keeping pace on the highway, but it isn't fast, and loaded with people it asks you to plan overtakes instead of snatching them. Where the CX-5 earns its keep is refinement. The cabin is quieter than the price suggests, the steering is tidy, and the whole thing feels a class above the budget crossovers it undercuts on rental rate.

Space and luggage

The boot is where the CX-5 pulls ahead of a small hatch or a compact crossover. At 442 litres with the rear seats up, it swallows two large suitcases plus a couple of soft bags for a DXB or DWC run without anything folded down. Drop the back seats and the floor opens past 1,300 litres, which is enough for flatpack furniture, a bike, or the kind of load a smaller car makes you leave behind.

Up front, two adults get proper room and a raised seating position, which is half the reason people rent an SUV in the first place. The back seat is genuinely comfortable for two adults or three children across. Put a fourth adult back there for a long airport haul with everyone's cases aboard and it tightens up, but that's true of nearly every SUV this size, and the CX-5 handles it better than most.

On Dubai roads and in the summer

At 4.55 metres long it's bigger than a Creta or a Kicks, so tight tower parking and busy mall multi-storeys take a touch more care, though nothing a reversing camera doesn't sort. The ground clearance sits just under 200 millimetres, plenty for speed bumps and steep mall ramps without a scrape. Don't read that as a desert tool, though. This is a front-wheel-drive car on road tyres, and it belongs on tarmac, not soft sand. If Hatta trails or dune tracks are the plan, you want a proper 4x4 instead.

On Sheikh Zayed Road the CX-5 is comfortably in its element for cruising and steady overtakes, and it stays quiet and stable at the national limit. The AC is a real strength in July. The cabin is mid-sized, so it doesn't have the vast volume of a big seven-seater to fight, and the vents pull hard once you're moving. Expect it to bring a cabin that's been baking at 45 degrees down to bearable within a few minutes, which is more than some cheaper crossovers manage.

A few rental facts worth reading before you book. This car includes 1,000 km over the rental period, then it's AED 1 per extra km, which is steeper than most cars in our fleet, so a couple of long Abu Dhabi runs will add up and are worth planning around. Salik tolls and any RTA fines pass to you as the renter, as they do with every car. You can take the keys from 21, where a lot of the market still holds out for 25.

Who should rent it, who should size up

Rent the CX-5 if you want a step up in space, quiet and quality over a budget crossover, but you don't need three rows or a big fuel bill. A couple or a small family doing city weeks, mall runs, the school route and the occasional airport pickup is exactly its beat, and the calm cabin makes longer highway drives easy. Renting from 21 helps if you're under the usual cutoff.

Size up or look elsewhere in two cases. If you're regularly carrying six or seven people, you need a three-row SUV, not this. And if your week involves real off-road driving, the front-wheel-drive CX-5 isn't built for it, so take a genuine 4x4. One honest note on cost: if it's only you doing light errands, a smaller crossover or a hatch does that job for less rental and less fuel. The CX-5 is worth its premium when you actually use the space and the refinement, which for most people renting a mid-size SUV in Dubai is the whole point.