Our Sport Nav+ CX-5 comes as standard with powerful adaptive LED headlamps that swivel around corners to illuminate your way at lower speeds

In the summer, it is quite possible to drive a car, for weeks or even months, without ever having to use the headlights. But as the nights close in, an increasing amount of our driving takes place in low light conditions or in the dark. That’s when you discover if you should have ticked the box for upgraded headlights.

Fortunately, our Sport Nav+ CX-5 comes as standard with powerful adaptive LED headlamps that swivel around corners to illuminate your way at lower speeds. They really are superb, providing far-reaching, long-distance visibility, without blinding oncoming drivers. You can pay £666 extra for a Safety Pack that includes even cleverer LED lights, which switch on individual bulbs to work around other road users, but it hardly seems necessary.

Indeed, with heated seats and a heated steering wheel also included in the standard trim, the big Mazda is an ideal car in which to face the coming season. Unless of course the snow begins to fall. While our front-wheel drive CX-5 will, I’m sure, tackle the early flurries with aplomb, you’d have to stretch to the more powerful 184hp model to get all-wheel drive.

P11d/BiK: £29,635 (33%) MPG/CO2: 49.6mpg (WLTP)/128g/km (NEDC Correlated) Test MPG:43mpg