Mazda 2 Grand Parenting At Its Best

The autumn of our lives

By Connor Corby

Picture yourself in a very, very cold field. The ground is muddy, leaf-littered and every surface you touch is either mossy, damp, or a slimy fusion of both. The grey sky is raining - not enough to run for cover, but enough to chill the bones, with the occasional droplet sneaking its way down your neck to your half-frozen nape.

You’ve driven hours to get here, and the nearest hot coffee is hours away. On top of all this, your grandmother is with you, also wet and cold. Does this sound like the kind of thing a modern teen, or indeed one from any generation, would find fun?

Well that’s where you’re wrong because, against very obvious odds, my decision to accept an invitation from my Grandma Sue to share a drive with her to the Blue Mountains to gaze upon wet leaves, and to give her my opinions on the small yet mighty Mazda2 as a potential downsizing option for her, turned out to be equal parts illuminating and enjoyable.

Obviously I felt conflicted when I was first asked to take my grandmother to Mount Wilson to experience the golden-browns of autumn. The proposition posed numerous risks; the weather didn’t seem in our favour, and I’d be behind the wheel of a car I was entirely unfamiliar with. 

What if I didn’t like the car? What if the trip descended into awkward silence before we even reached the highway, and I spent the day stewing in uncomfortable ums and ahhs? What if my vision of a miserably muddy expanse manifested into reality?

Being the saintly grandson that I am, I pushed these doubts aside and, with a slightly-too-forced grin, responded with an enthusiastic: “Yes, I’d love to!” And off we went, on a trip I knew barely anything about other than the proposition of allegedly prettified trees and cold mountain air. 

I found myself oddly surrounded by old-new paradoxes. Here I was in a car with my grandmother, a woman I have literally known since birth and have spent months of my life with, accumulatively, and I felt as if I was talking to someone I’d never met before.

Somehow, in 18 years of life, this was the first time I’d heard her speak about her own adolescence; of her first road trip, her first car, and the questionable activities she and her friends would partake in when they, like me, were fresh out of high school. 

When she was 18, unlike me (a jobless freeloader), she was already a mother to her newborn son; my father, a fact with which I was familiar but that we rarely discussed. 

And yet, with the dusk brown greenery of the Australian wilderness and the cracked asphalt of the open road stretching out before us, I found a genuine sense of camaraderie and a willingness on both our parts to open up about our lives, discussing the boundless potential of my future and the insights of her past.

Her entire personality is a rich tapestry of experiences, with a stunning depth of which I was shockingly unfamiliar. Grandma Sue, quite literally an old woman at 71 years of age, seemed filled with youthful conversational energy that made the trip feel more like two friends on a drive than grandmother and grandson heading out to watch some leaves die. 

A new dynamic emerging from the foundations of the old. 

And that’s what is at the heart of the Mazda2 - at least in my inexperienced eyes - something dynamic emerging from familiar foundations. I feel like I’ve seen Mazda2s on the road for all of my 18 years but this was my first time at the wheel.

When you break the car down to its singular components; its tight steering, the rev-ready acceleration, the infotainment system and the one-click-away Apple CarPlay, nothing presents itself as singularly groundbreaking. And yet when each element comes together under the single roof of the Mazda2, something new and exciting is born.

As someone who was taught to drive in a manual (very much against my will), the instant responsiveness and the tightness of both the acceleration and brake control were immediately exciting, and combined with the vast, winding roads that opened up as we left Sydney, the Mazda2 transitioned to a road-bound rocket, much to the dismay of my rather vocal passenge

My favourite feature of the Mazda was the Sport button, which to my pleasant surprise, actually delivered on its promise (in our family car, the only thing it seems to do is light up a button that says Sport).

What could have been a long and gruelling journey breezed by along with the passing mist in what felt like just 30 minutes but was actually two hours, no doubt thanks to the Mazda2’s delightful drivability

What had begun as a potentially boring road trip to the Blue Mountains - an area I’ve visited multiple times and found, whilst enjoyable in its stillness and altitude, rather dull - had slowly mutated into something new and unforeseen. By the time we reached our destination, the stunning Breenhold Gardens at Mount Wilson, it no longer seemed like we were in the Blue Mountains at all, and I found myself within scenery I found not only new, but breathtakingly gorgeous. 

The light drizzle and moisture that had hung over us all morning had combined with the autumn forestry into a sparkling, lush landscape I can only really describe as something out of an oddly nostalgic dream. Towering trees with writhing, serpent-like branches adorned by golden-brown autumn leaves hid their wooden bodies beneath thick, lush layers of sprawling moss that crept up the ancient trunks like its own miniature ecosystem. 

In scale both large and minuscule, the interwoven complexities of nature reigned over the landscape and reminded us, constantly, that we were merely guests here. Every tiny pebble and insurmountable stone wall was coated in the magic of bright green damp forestry, every surface perfectly cluttered by either tightly knit mosses or a thick floor of damp golden leaves.

It felt like stepping out of the Mazda2’s doors had simultaneously transported us through the closet to Narnia. By the time we reached the gardens any sense of being tethered to reality - or the idea that we were just under two hours away from the Harbour Bridge - was long gone. 

Stone ruins of marble pillars lay discarded on the ground, symbiotically overgrown with fungi and moss beneath the widest variety of trees - all gorgeous - I’ve ever seen scattered throughout a dew-dropped field of grass.

Toadstool mushrooms - red-tipped with white spots as if they were plucked straight from a cartoon - sprouted from beneath the trunks of great trees. I have seen fungi, trees, grass and gardens before; but something about it, again, felt inexplicably new.

After a long day of exploring what was, essentially, a real-life overgrown fairy garden, it was time to head back to reality. 

Whilst part of me was regretful to leave one of my newfound favourite locations, another part of me was excited to see what was next; Grandma’s turn to drive the Mazda2. Now it was my turn to sit as the passenger princess, chirping unrequested backseat driving advice like Jiminy Cricket on crack. Not even 10 minutes into Grandma’s turn I found myself having to not only explain but justify the existence of Apple CarPlay, which devolved into a rather heated debate on whether driving with music on is either likely to prevent you from road accidents, or cause more of them. 

One of my favourite features of driving the Mazda2, the simple yet efficient heads-up display that projects both your driving speed and the speed limit holographically in front of the road, was immediately an issue for Grandma Sue, who loves technology in the same way that I love K-Pop. 

The system did win her over in the end, as she realised it meant she could see her speed without ever taking her eyes off the road, but her initial battles were an entertaining, slightly frightening obtuse clash between old and new. 

By the time she was willing to surrender the steering wheel back to me we were in agreement that, yes, the smallest Mazda in the range is indeed a joy to drive. Especially in Sport mode.  

By the time we reached home, most of the magic residing in the foggy Blue Mountains seemed like a distant and beautiful Lynchian dream.

But a little of the magic remained, hanging in the air. In the damp brown leaves still somehow glued to the car in the driveway, in the fleeting splashes of mountain mud, and in the unspoken but mutually acknowledged bond between grandmother and grandson, all the more strengthened by that day in the mountains.  

Grandma’s View

By Suzanne Primmer

There comes a time when one must at least debate downsizing; when the super fund is not so super any more, when it’s hard to find the energy to look after all the things one has acquired and when you can’t get into your car because you’ve been ute-ilised.

It could be time for a smaller abode with no stairs, a more manageable garden and a more central location.

And then there is the car.  Do I still want or need my high-performance, overly tempting and fuel-thirsty car?

Parking now takes time and care, particularly after a hip replacement, and I recently got stuck outside it when I found two behemoths had parked so close either side of me that I couldn’t get in.  It was the first time I’d seriously thought about downsizing the car.

Having the opportunity to test drive a Mazda2 recently set me to wondering, am I there yet?  The Mazda zipped through narrow streets in inner Sydney, where parking is an extreme challenge.  I could park it in a jiff into a pocket of a space.  As for carparks in shopping malls I was attracted to those signs that indicate “Small Car Only.”  I’m there!

My recently licensed grandson is constantly mobile, or on his mobile, and any lengthy conversation is reduced to a “Hi and goodbye G’ma” so it was with slim hope that I suggested we take the Mazda2 further afield to experience the autumnal glory of the unique heritage listed Breenhold Gardens at Mount Wilson.

We both admired the subtle red stitching to the dash and the seats, the good visuals in traffic, and for me, the comfortable seats.  Bridging the generational gap, the Sport mode appealed to us both.

Being somewhat of a luddite I struggled with the pop-up screen (whatever that is called) but I eventually came around to the idea that it is good to be told what the speed limit is, right next to an indication of what speed I’m actually doing. Indeed, it might well be imperative in my case, since my licence points are already alarmingly downsized. 

If the time to slim down in size is coming, the Mazda2 might well be an answer.