Long-term report: Mazda’s 2 Hybrid shows a different side of this brand

I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for our Mazda 2 Hybrid. After a whole year of driving Mazda’s poshest, biggest and most expensive (at the moment) car – the CX-60 – suddenly swapping into its second cheapest model was always going to be an eye opening experience. And indeed, it has been – but not for the reasons you might expect.

Our dearly departed CX-60 was a bit of a bruiser in every way: size, power, weight, and even price. By comparison, the 2 Hybrid couldn’t be more different. One third of the power, nearly half the weight, and pretty much half the price too – assuming you’re up for twisting the salesman’s arm a bit.

It would be understandable to find that this turns out to be half the car the CX-60 is, then. But surprisingly, it seems to do a lot of things just as well – and in lots of cases, better even.

Let’s get the obvious differences out of the way first: you’re not getting a spacious load-lugger here. Even as superminis go, the 2 Hybrid is pretty compact: sneaking in at under 4 metres in length. Thanks to its rather bulbous roofline, that doesn’t mean a claustrophobic cabin – but don’t expect long-legged adults to be comfortable in the back for too long. The boot is far from the biggest in its class too, but perfectly fine for a bit of shopping.

With that said, it’s surprising how much stuff you can squeeze into the 2 Hybrid given a bit of Tetris-style manoeuvring. If we’re honest too, this isn’t the size and shape of car you’d expect to be regularly carting four adults around in. For the odd occasion though, it’s more than spacious enough.

Next up, let’s talk performance. Waving goodbye to the CX-60 and its 3.3-litre diesel, the 2 Hybrid couldn’t be more different on paper. Its engine is less than half the size, has half the number of cylinders, and comes with – gasp – a CVT automatic gearbox, rather than its bigger brother’s dual-clutch one.

And yet, in lots of ways the 2 Hybrid feels far more sprightly than its bigger brother. The clever hybrid system means you take off at a surprising rate from a standstill – thanks to an electric motor doing most of the work. There’s quite an adjustment going from a conventional car into a hybrid like this: you quickly realise you can nip out of junctions much faster than you’re expecting, for example.

As for that often-dreaded CVT gearbox, it seems that Mazda – or rather Toyota, who actually developed it – has finally got the hang of making the experience not completely miserable. It helps that the 1.5-litre, three cylinder petrol engine almost sounds sort of sporty, but the real secret is letting that 79bhp electric motor to take care of most of the power delivery.

The result is a very unstressed, almost serene driving experience, with the petrol engine barely noticeable half the time. It’s also extremely smooth: no clunky gear changes (because there are no ‘gears’ as such), no awkward jumps between electric and petrol power, and a completely linear feel to how it accelerates.

In fact, after a few weeks behind the wheel, jumping back into a more conventional petrol or diesel car can feel like going back in time. Cars like the 2 Hybrid are about as close as you can get to an electric car, without having to plug it in at night.

So what are we missing from the decidedly posh CX-60, then? Well, the 2 Hybrid certainly isn’t as luxurious inside. Mazda’s trademark premium-feeling interior is missing in action here – partially because this is a cheaper car, but mostly because this is actually a Toyota in disguise (did we mention that?).

And while it’s far from being short of standard equipment, a few things have curiously fallen off the options list. There’s no way of getting heated seats or steering wheel, for example – which is a bit odd given that the older, cheaper, non-hybrid Mazda 2 has had both available for a while now.

Beyond that though, there’s very little to fault about the 2 Hybrid. In fact I’m amazed how well it’s fitted into performing the same routine as the CX-60: piloting me up and down various bits of motorway for three to four hours at a time without inducing any back ache. It’s even doing baffling levels of fuel economy: despite my heavy right foot, I’m managing around 62mpg on average.

So there you have it: perhaps you don’t need that luxurious, enormous, £50,000 SUV after all.