Car of the Year Awards 2026: Best family car interior
The Honda Civic may have a fine interior, but there’s another car in the family car class that goes one better. In fact, the Mazda 3 beats premium rivals such as the Audi A3, BMW 1 Series and Mercedes-Benz A-Class when it comes to quality, and also exceeds them for user-friendliness.
Despite costing significantly less to buy than its German rivals (and the Civic), the Mazda is full of plush, expensive-feeling materials; nothing about it even hints at cost-cutting. All versions are well equipped, but range-topping Takumi trim adds black leather seat upholstery (rather than the cloth you get with other trim levels), ramping up the classiness by another notch.
Like the Civic, the Mazda has slick-feeling physical knobs and buttons on the dashboard and steering wheel, so everything is easy to find and operate while driving. Even better, while the infotainment screen is relatively small, you can interact with it by feel via a rotary controller between the front seats, cutting down on driver distraction. None of its rivals has such a worthwhile feature.
The Mazda may not be as good to drive, as frugal or as practical as the Honda Civic, but it has some solid strengths – and its interior is at the top of the list.
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