A premium crossover is usually about leather, silence and a pretty showroom picture. Mazda decided otherwise. Together with the tuning house TCP MAGIC and TOYO TIRES, it has built the rally MAGIC TY MAZDA CX-60 and sent it where a polished SUV quickly stops being a picture—into Japan’s XCR Sprint Cup Hokkaido series.
The start is set for September 4–6: the crew takes on the sixth round of Rally Hokkaido in the Tokachi area. And this is where it gets interesting. Behind the wheel sit no hired stars, but Mazda’s own engineers, Kazuhiro Terakawa and Miyoko Ishikawa. That is no accident. The brand deliberately frames the project not as an advertising run but as a field laboratory: gather data in the harshest conditions—and carry it straight over to production cars.
The car is entered in the XC-2S class. At its heart is a CX-60 with the inline Skyactiv-D 3.3 diesel, while grip with the ground is left to Toyo Open Country R/T tyres. The XCR Sprint Cup Hokkaido series has run since 2022 and is built for cross-country vehicles and SUVs. This is no asphalt showcase. It is an environment that, within a couple of special stages, drags every weak spot into the open—suspension, cooling, underbody protection, all-wheel-drive tuning.
And this is not the first run. A year ago, on its debut at this very rally, the CX-60 came within a breath of winning—second in class, just 36 seconds behind the leader. For a crossover attacking competitive gravel for the first time, that result borders on a sensation. So the 2026 return looks logical down to the smallest detail. The model was built from the outset as a pricier, more technically ambitious Mazda SUV: a longitudinal layout, a big diesel, a bet on handling and the feel of a “senior” car. But cars like this live and die by fine tuning. Rally does not only test toughness. It shows how a heavy crossover behaves on broken surfaces, under long loads and sudden changes of grip—exactly where the marketing slides fall silent.
For anyone eyeing an expensive diesel SUV, a rally programme is more honest than any press release. What matters is not glossy talk about being premium, but how the suspension, the diesel, the gearbox and the tyres survive bad roads. If Mazda really carries the lessons of Rally Hokkaido into its production cars, it will not be only the racers who win.
