Almost 2 years to the day after purchasing new, we traded in my wife’s daily driver/our family car - a 2024 Mazda CX-90 I-6. I worked for Mazda for a number of years and we were excited about all of the hype involving a new platform RWD biased I-6 to replace our ‘21 Mazda CX-9 Signature (one of our favorite vehicles we’ve owned). At that time of release (Summer 2023) they offered quite a bit of incentives so we traded. We did, regretfully, have to go down to a mid level trim to get a 2nd row bench seat as we had 2 dogs and always fostered a 3rd.
Aside from better fuel economy (30-32 at 75mph on the highway), a marginal increase in interior space and more power at highway passing speeds, the CX-90 was a downgrade over our CX-9 in every way I cared about. The suspension was laughably stiff in the way the Big 3 used to put the stiffest shocks they could source on economy cars they labeled sporty. It crashed over the tiniest imperfections and jarred you on the bigger ones. The entire drivetrain and floor board vibrated at half to full throttle in the first 2 gears. Also, with it piping in some engine sound there was a resonance at those same speeds that sounded like you opened a window at 70mph. The steering is quite slow and combined with the harsh ride and hefty weight, it felt ponderous. The fanboys of this vehicle love to say it “handles just like an X5”…..IMO, people that say that with a straight face have never driven a properly functioning X5. In contrast, the CX-9 felt like a Miata comatose to this thing.
I could go on and on about the things we didn’t like but none of them made it unlivable. The dozens of issues we had over 2 years did.
A small list:
* Electriclal gremlins such as blind spot monitoring that would ghost and false alarm constantly. We had at least 2 software updates that didn’t help. The most dangerous was a wing adaptive cruise control system that would emergency brake on the highway when a large truck entered a curve 1/8th mile ahead of you. We almost got rear ended by traffic behind us several times because of this.
* Water leak from the sunroof and windshield that reguired 3 visits and 45 days in the shop.
* There was a recall for the gear on the steering rack. We had that done and less than a year later it failed and the steering would snap out of your hands trying to center back making a left turn. This required a whole new steering rack.
There are maybe a half dozen issues I didn’t list as well. We actually contacted a lemon law lawyer as it qualified due to the time and number of repair attempts and are receiving a financial settlement from Mazda as we didn’t want to lose the $7500 EV settlement that expires today and traded it 4 days ago for a VW ID4. My wife really wanted to go the EV route so financially, with the incredible employee lease deals, we made that decision. So far we love it. Admittedly, there is a pretty big learning curve with all of the tech for me but for the next 3 years it will be her daily driver. Our dogs fit great in the rear seat so we are happy.
Here’s hoping we got all of the bad luck and issues out of the way for the next owner of our old CX-90. At least there are getting a vehicle that ran nothing but HPL past the first 800 or so miles!
Aside from better fuel economy (30-32 at 75mph on the highway), a marginal increase in interior space and more power at highway passing speeds, the CX-90 was a downgrade over our CX-9 in every way I cared about. The suspension was laughably stiff in the way the Big 3 used to put the stiffest shocks they could source on economy cars they labeled sporty. It crashed over the tiniest imperfections and jarred you on the bigger ones. The entire drivetrain and floor board vibrated at half to full throttle in the first 2 gears. Also, with it piping in some engine sound there was a resonance at those same speeds that sounded like you opened a window at 70mph. The steering is quite slow and combined with the harsh ride and hefty weight, it felt ponderous. The fanboys of this vehicle love to say it “handles just like an X5”…..IMO, people that say that with a straight face have never driven a properly functioning X5. In contrast, the CX-9 felt like a Miata comatose to this thing.
I could go on and on about the things we didn’t like but none of them made it unlivable. The dozens of issues we had over 2 years did.
A small list:
* Electriclal gremlins such as blind spot monitoring that would ghost and false alarm constantly. We had at least 2 software updates that didn’t help. The most dangerous was a wing adaptive cruise control system that would emergency brake on the highway when a large truck entered a curve 1/8th mile ahead of you. We almost got rear ended by traffic behind us several times because of this.
* Water leak from the sunroof and windshield that reguired 3 visits and 45 days in the shop.
* There was a recall for the gear on the steering rack. We had that done and less than a year later it failed and the steering would snap out of your hands trying to center back making a left turn. This required a whole new steering rack.
There are maybe a half dozen issues I didn’t list as well. We actually contacted a lemon law lawyer as it qualified due to the time and number of repair attempts and are receiving a financial settlement from Mazda as we didn’t want to lose the $7500 EV settlement that expires today and traded it 4 days ago for a VW ID4. My wife really wanted to go the EV route so financially, with the incredible employee lease deals, we made that decision. So far we love it. Admittedly, there is a pretty big learning curve with all of the tech for me but for the next 3 years it will be her daily driver. Our dogs fit great in the rear seat so we are happy.
Here’s hoping we got all of the bad luck and issues out of the way for the next owner of our old CX-90. At least there are getting a vehicle that ran nothing but HPL past the first 800 or so miles!
