Road Tests: Long-Term Test

Video highlights of this vehicle

Our road test coordinator, Neil Chirico, first experienced the Mazda Tribute when it was introduced. He'd driven our long-term version a few times, but had never been assigned to the vehicle. He was looking forward to getting a chance to drive it for an extended period of time, after remembering his first encounter fondly.

Not much has changed from that first impression. Neil still likes the overall exterior design, sporty, yet better dressed than the Ford Escape. The interior is nice, but Neil did discover some small areas that could use improvement.

One minor complaint was the area on the upper door panel where the driver's elbow naturally rests when her hands are at the 10 and 2 positions on the steering wheel. It is constructed of a hard plastic material. In Neil's case, it made it uncomfortable to rest his arm there for long periods of time. In many vehicles, this area is padded vinyl or leather — more appropriate choices of materials.

One thing Neil didn't find on that first drive was the noise in the rear seat area of the cabin. He wrote, "During a road trip to San Diego, we got some third-person perspective from the back-seat passenger, my girlfriend, Suzy. Although the seats proved to be comfortable, it was a noisy area to ride in." During conversation with front-seat passengers, the rear had so much excessive noise that on more than one occasion, the rear-seat occupant had to ask them to repeat part of the conversation.

As we have noted in the past, the Tribute has a very poor driving range between fuel fill-ups. With only 16.4 gallons of fuel required to top off the tank and an estimated 18 miles per gallon of fuel consumption for city driving, you get less than 300 miles of driving per tank-full. In fact, not one of the log's fuel fill-ups shows more than 300 miles on the trip counter. Neil wrote, "Roundtrip, I put about 140 miles a day on the Tribute. I was filling this thing up every other day, putting about 260 miles on each tank. A fuel tank with closer to 20 gallons would be my recommendation."

Neil did average about 21.5 miles to the gallon on the tanks for which only he drove the Tribute, so it is possible to get good mileage. Other than the few nit-picks that Neil came up with, his first impression of the vehicle still holds true: Driving the Mazda Tribute is like the best of both worlds. You get the utility of an SUV combined with the qualities of a sports car. Neil concluded his logbook notes, "Mazda, you did a great job! Keep up the good work."

Current Odometer: 27,367
Best Fuel Economy: 24.8 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 15.1 mpg
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 18.3 mpg
Body Repair Costs: None
Maintenance Costs: None
Problems: None