New CX9 - Thoughts After First 2000 Miles

[highlander709]

We got our new CX9 AWD GT about a month ago. It's the wife's daily driver and also the family vehicle for longer trips. I had the opportunity to spend some time in it over the weekend traveling to and from Pittsburgh attending the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix.

It is such a huge improvement over our 2002 Chevy TrailBlazer, which we had to replace, I hesitate offering any criticism. That said, there are a couple issues that I wish Mazda would have addressed. I like the power liftgate, but wish I could open the rear glass independent of the liftgate. The front seat is very comfortable and all controls are within reach, however, as others have noted, storage is laking. Why waste so much real estate on the center consol with the gear shifter? Had the gear selector been placed closer to the driver, another cup holder could easily have been included near the passenger. I would also like to have another power outlet in the center stack. I had my Garmin plugged in one outlet and my cell phone plugged in the other, but my front seat passenger wanted to watch a movie on the portable DVD player and had no power outlet available. I am also suprised there isn't a outlet in the back seat center stack. My comments may seem a bit nit-picky, but these are the details that separate good from great.

One final note, the trip was great. It was a quiet and comfortable drive and we all arrived rested. The other plus was averaging 22 mpg with mostly interstate travelling at 70 mph, but also some stop and go city driving thrown in.

We tend to keep our vehicles for a long time and I can see that we will be pretty happy with the CX9 for the next 8-10 years. It's also more fun knowing we financed at 0%.

 

[CX9 SportOwner]

Nice to own a car that only induces a few minor nitpicks.

We don't really miss the opening glass like we had on our CR-V. By having fixed glass Mazda saved a lot of weight vs. a liftgate with a lot more structure to support itself without the glass bonded in place.

A French-Fry/Cel Phone Cup would have been nice in the front console, but you wouldn't get another cup holder in there. The shift tower with the manual mode takes up a lot of room underneath. There are bottle holders in each door.

I'd get a dual outlet adapter and put it inside the console storage for the GPS and Phone, and use the front outlet for the DVD.

Otherwise ....Enjoy

 

[nguvanh]

I use front outlet for my iphone. I use dual outlet splitter in center storage for 2 DVDs for my kids.

 

[Nuzy]

I agree on the storage thing. It doesn't bode well for long trips with kids, but you kind of get used to it and adapt. The way I see it, it's a sportier CUV, so perhaps front end storage / space was not a priority as it might have been for something like a Pilot or Acadia.

Like the others said, a dual outlet adapter is the way to go to increase the # of power outlets...just get one and leave it in the center console...you will learn not to store much in there anyway ...but I also agree with you one would be nice in the back.

The rear window comes down on our 04 4runner, and I do like that quite a bit. Easy to put in dry cleaning, small amount of groceries, etc., but it's not something that I would say is a must have for me.

The biggest pain in the rear for us with this vehicle right now is that both of our kids are in car seats / boosters. It makes carrying passengers in the third row a bit inconvenient because it limits the ability for those people to get in the third row, so they tend to kind of fall into the back row because you can't get the maximum space to allow them to get in due to the 2nd row seats not able to fold forward. This is in NO WAY a design flaw, just a consequence of having young kids and this won't be an issue once the kids are out of car seats. The split seat design of the Acadia is very nice for this, but taken as a whole, we thought the CX9 was a much better value.

 

[xarthan]

there's out an outlet at the back of the vehicle in case you didn't know.

 

[highlander709]

Thanks for all the advice. I was already aware of the solutions everyone has mentioned - they are all successful workarounds for minor flaws in the design. My point was as good as the CX9 is, with a little more attention to detail it could have been even that much better.