WHEN I think of a Mazda, the wonderful, evergreen MX-5 immediately springs into my mind. It’s lightweight, agile and intuitive - it’s in many ways the complete antithesis to the Japanese marque’s flagship.

However, while it’s indeed far-removed from the two-seater’s traits, the CX-80 has just as many plus points as its tiny stablemate for contrasting reasons.

It’s a bold move from Mazda, too - its three-row, seven-seat layout means it’s taking on established players in the £50,000 to £60,000 SUV bracket, taking on well-specced versions of Skoda’s Kodiaq, Kia’s Sorento and Hyundai’s Santa Fe.

It’s handsome, too, being typically Mazda (small headlights, a striking front grille and swooping styling cues) while its interior retains the marque-wide, easy-to-use simplicity with the added-on luxury which you’d expect from a car of its price.

You’ll notice that premium quality as soon as you open its door and get settled into its driver’s seat: there’s vast amounts of leather, intricate stitching and Mazda’s flawless infotainment system housed in a large, rectangular-shaped screen.

I was thankful, too, for the existence of a panel of real, physical buttons to control the air conditioning and heated seats with a single prod, rather than having to bring up a menu within a sub-menu as you must in most new cars these days.

There are just two engine options, which in itself is a breath of fresh air as there’s no way of getting lost in a long list of options. You can have one version of a 3.3-litre six-cylinder diesel or a 2.5-litre petrol hybrid and, having tested both, they’re both great matches for the CX-80, which comes with four-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic gearbox as standard.

This week’s test car, which had the PHEV petrol unit, doesn’t have its sibling’s torque or its fuel economy, but it does offer 323bhp and a handy 6.8-second sprint time to 60mph. Unlike many in the government, though, I’d still plump for the diesel - you cannot beat almost 500-mile fill-ups, no matter what MPs will bleat on about.

I know, I know… Mazda claim a staggering 176mpg for the petrol, but to do so it’s an impossible feat as it would mean being very sparing with petrol power and fully charging the hybrid battery before every trip. However, it does have a handy electric range of 38 miles, which means short trips can be done without ever awakening the main engine.

As a dad-of-two, I was bowled over by the CX80’s layout. The two-three-two seat design is well thought out in this version and the rear two can comfortably accommodate small children, but given they were not required in my week-long loan, I simply flattened them and had more boot space as a result for the no end of items required by a seven-year-old lad and a four-year-old girl. With the third row folded away, the boot grows to 566 litres or, if you slide the second row forwards, 687 litres, which is cavernous.

To drive, it’s as you’d expect of a car of its size: there’s a fair amount of body roll and it obviously doesn’t share the MX-5’s passion for corners, but so what? It’s a completely different beast and is best suited to day-to-day family life.

So, having lived with the CX-80 for a week, would it plump for this over its well-established rivals? Yes, simply, because it’s just so much better looking and interesting than its competitors. In many ways it’s the perfect family car.