Move all the way up to the luxurious ES and add more goodies to the standard LX package, including leather seats, of which the driver's has 8-way power adjustment, faux wood or carbon fiber trim, a leather wrapped parking brake, chromed interior accents, power moonroof, power sliding doors and illuminated vanity mirrors. You can add the GFX package to the ES as well, but the seatback table isn't included.

What's more, Mazda offers a long list of accessories, including luggage, ski or bike racks, hood deflector, mud guards, fog lamps and an in-dash, 6-disc CD audio system with cassette - the latter two items come standard with the LX.

Still more? How about a quadruple five-star crash-test rating! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, recently gave it the highest rating possible for all frontal and side-impact tests, making it one of seven out of 126 vehicles tested to receive such honors.

To be candid, function and form rarely work this harmoniously in the minivan arena. While it may have missed out on the hot crossover segment by not continuing along its original unorthodox path, Mazda's new MPV is in a class of few, outperforming most of its competitors in driving dynamics, style and convenience features.