Straight to the head of the Q?

The Audi Q5 has long been among the best upmarket family SUVs you can buy - but is the latest iteration good enough to beat rivals from BMW and Mazda? We've lined them up to find out

- LAWRENCE CHEUNG

HAVE WE GONE back in time? You might be wondering why we have three diesel SUVs battling it out, but we can assure you that this is not an issue of What Car? from a decade ago. You see, while sales figures have been declining, a diesel SUV still makes plenty of sense for high-mileage drivers or those who use their car for towing.

What's more, diesel power has always suited the Audi Q5 particularly well, and there’s every reason to think that will continue to be the case with the arrival of the third generation of the brand’s upmarket family SUV. We're testing it in range-topping Edition 1 trim.

One of its fiercest rivals, as always, is the BMW X3. That model, too, was renewed only recently, and it faces the Q5 in 20d xDrive guise and in popular M Sport trim (with the £2300 Pro Pack included).

While our final contender, the Mazda CX-60, has been around for longer, an update for 2025 has brought revised trim levels and tweaked suspension, the latter in a bid to improve the way it drives. Unlike its 2.0-litre, four-cylinder rivals, the CX-60 is powered by a 3.3-litre, six-cylinder engine and is being tested in its priciest, Takumi Plus trim. If you're in the market for a plush, diesel-powered family SUV, all of these models look promising on paper.

DRIVING

Performance, ride, handling, refinement

With its much larger-capacity engine, the CX-60 pumps out significantly more power and torque than its rivals. However, this doesn't translate to notably quicker acceleration from a standstill. It doesn’t feel as eager as its rivals at low speeds; as a result, the dash from 0-60mph is very close between all three, with the CX-60 slightly trailing the Q5 and just ahead of the X3.