If you look at reviews of the Mazda CX-90 online, you’ll find lots of criticism. Edmunds scored it dead last in a 9-car comparison and called the PHEV’s transmission “troublesome,” Motor Trend calls the SUV “the first Mazda we remember driving that is not deserving of our unconditional love,” and Car and Driver says its long-term test vehicle “came up short.” So I went into my Iowa vacation weekend expecting something disappointing, but in reality, what I found is a car that — while perhaps not best in its class — felt like a really solid three-row SUV. And when I looked at the used pricing, my mind was blown.
The Mazda brand right now is in a weird spot. Is it a performance brand? Is it a luxury brand? Is it an everyperson’s brand? Who knows. But I know my wife, a lifelong Lexus fan, likes premium cars, and given what Mazda has done with its interiors over the past decade or so, I was hoping the CX-90 would suit her liking.
So we hit Burbank Airport, and my son got to see the world from above for the first time; he was a huge fan:
Upon touchdown in Minneapolis, our Soul Red CX-90 media loaner awaited us in an airport shuttle lot:
It looks nice, and though the mostly black interior is a little bland, material qualities are impressive. My wife Elise says it’s “Not quite luxurious, but definitely premium.” I agree with her.
Elise, my child Delmar, and I loaded in, and we pointed the Mazda’s nose southwest towards our destination of Okoboji, Iowa, where we planned to meet up with Elise’s sister and her family at their lake house.
Even before we left the parking lot, I found three annoyances. The first is the shifter, which I’m surprised hasn’t been recalled yet given that — if you were to follow the long-standing PRNDL up-down shift pattern that was basically the standard for decades — you’d end end up putting the car into reverse instead of park. And it’s not just me saying this:
The second issue is storage. The Mazda doesn’t have much of it when compared to other family vehicles. There’s a glovebox; there are medium-sized, non-expandable door pockets; and there’s a really shallow center console. Other than some cupholders and a little wireless charger cubby that pops an error message up on the screen anytime you put a non-phone in it, there’s really nothing else up front. I want more.
The third annoyance is a small one, but something that people with kids will notice. When I walk to the car to load my kid up into his car seat, I grab the door handle and…nothing. That’s because the rear doors do not have keyless entry capability. If I want to unlock the rear door with the fob in my pocket, I have to grab the front door handle, then the rear. It’s not ideal; for someone loading kids into a family car, a rear door unlocking when I yank the handle would be helpful (my wife’s 2017 Lexus RX has keyless entry on all doors).
On the plus side, my son loved the panoramic roof; it kept him entertained during our three-hour drive from Minneapolis to Okoboji, Iowa.
From the airport lot, my wife drove the Mazda three hours in the dark as I worked. From the passenger’s seat, I noticed a bit of a firm ride over cracks in the pavement.
I also noticed that the headlights — which come standard with automatic high beams— are excellent. The brightness is good and the light spread is just right, which is comforting when you’re with your family in deer country.
Elise and I really liked the infotainment system, largely because we’re used to a dial-style infotainment controller in both her Lexus RX and my BMW i3. Simply bump the control dial to the right and click, and you’re using Apple Carplay, looking at Maps or Spotify or whatever. The screen is a bit far away, but it is a touchscreen when in Apple Carplay/Android Auto mode, which was occasionally useful even though I preferred using the dial.
The time in Okoboji was relaxed. I basically just hung out with family at their house, swam in a lake, checked out some museums, and ate good food. It was a super easy few days for the CX-90, which did its job beautifully.
When we hit up Walmart to stock the kitchen up for the week, the trunk swallowed everything:
Even with the third row up, there was more space than I expected:
And when it came time to load most of the crew into one car, I was yet again surprised. After having read so many reviews about how tight the interior is, I wasn’t expecting it to be reasonably comfortable back there for Elise’s sister and nephew. It seems to me that, so long as the combined height of the three people sitting in line doesn’t exceed about 17.5 feet (i.e. The average height of the driver and the two people sitting behind him/her is 5’9″), there’s enough comfort for somewhat long drives. 
The seat in the back is best suited for kids, but with three sub 5’9″ folks in a row, nobody was complaining about legroom, and in fact, the folks in the third row were happy with their cupholders, USB-C jacks, and dedicated third-row AC vents.
The one complaint I had about the seating situation involved my baby getting hurt. The second row bench is a 60/40 split-row, so if you’re in the last row and want to get out, you pull a latch and it slides and tilts the 60 (if on the driver’s side) or the 40 (on the passenger’s side) forward so you can step out. The problem I noticed was that my son had his arm reached out towards the inside of the car, and when I tilted/slid the 60 part of the bench forward, it and the edge of the car eat wanted to basically act like a giant pair of shears on his arm.
Luckily, I didn’t slide the seat forward with enough force to do any serious damage, though he was crying from the pain. I find the sliding mechanism to be intuitive, and I’m not sure how I’d suggest Mazda fix this or if they even should, but it’s just something to be careful of.
There wasn’t a whole lot to our time in Iowa; I just wanted to do midwestern things on my kid’s first trip to the region. And midwestern things we did; we rode a ferris wheel and I made my classic dad-joke about them all being made of iron:
My son got to enjoy his first merry-go-round:
Elise and I played putt-putt golf with her family while trying to keep Delmar from running around and bothering other golfers:
We explored local museums:
One museum even had a 97-year-old wooden “Funhouse Slide,” which Elise and I rode down on burlap sacks:
A big local treat is the nutty bar, along with root beer. The nutty bar is rectangular chunk of vanilla ice cream on a stick, with peanuts and chocolate on the outside; it’s simple and magical:
Also magical? The local delicacy called the “Tavern,” which is basically a loose-meat burger:
There was one point when I decided to head to the local Toyota dealership and charge the car to see what it’d be like driving the plug-in hybrid in all-electric mode. I was basically going to be driving just a few miles a day, so it seemed ideal.
Look at how cheap the energy is in Iowa; 14 cents per kWh!:
But 2.5 hours away from my family during vacation was not worth the 30ish miles the charge added to the CX-90’s range, especially since the vehicle drove rather strangely in EV mode. To me, it seemed like it was still driving like a gas car even after I forced it into EV mode, but doing a bit of research, I’ve learned that the CX-90 actually shifts in EV mode. From Edmunds:
To find out what was going on, we reached out to Dave Coleman, Mazda’s manager of vehicle dynamics for North America. “The shifting you’re feeling in EV mode is actual shifting,” he said. “The electric motor is between the engine and transmission, so the transmission is active no matter which power unit is working.”
…Coleman points out that, contrary to common belief, electric motors have powerbands similar to gasoline engines. “You can get more performance from a smaller motor if you use a transmission to keep the motor at an appropriate rpm,” Coleman said. “If you’re making a pure EV, it’s usually cheaper and easier to just use a bigger motor rather than adding a transmission. But in our case, we already have a transmission.”
There’s more to it. Coleman also notes that the way the CX-90’s all-wheel-drive system controls chassis behavior plays a role. “We vary the amount of coupling between the front and rear axles through the wet clutch that sends torque to the front wheels,” he said. “This changes the amount of yaw damping, which affects both the steering response and effort, so we can dial in steering behavior, and even tweak it for different situations.” By sending both power sources through the same transmission, Coleman says Mazda can keep this control consistent.
Nonetheless, it feels weird, and if I’m honest, overall the CX-90’s transmission was a bit clunky, shifting harshly during normal daily driving. I found the combined 323 horsepower from the electric motor and 2.5-liter naturally aspirated inline-four to be plenty, getting the vehicle up to speed quickly enough (0-60 is about 6-ish seconds according to a few sources), but it was sometimes a bit clunky getting there, and given what I’ve read about reliability, the slightly slower but lighter inline-six is the one to get (more on reliability in a bit).
After a few days in Iowa, we drove back to Minneapolis, and it was there in the city that I appreciated how much smaller the CX-90 felt to drive than it actually was. A 38.1-foot turning circle is fantastic for a three-row car — right there with the Toyota Grand Highlander. But it wasn’t even just the turning radius; the way the vehicle handled, its heavy but delightful steering (quite a few outlets have complained about the steering, but I enjoyed it), and just its general proportions that made it feel really not much bigger than my wife’s 2017 Lexus RX350. It’s a legitimately useful three-row SUV that’s not huge and plenty maneuverable, even in the parking lot of the Mall of America, where in this photo you can see how wide those rear doors open.
Here’s another look at that wide rear door opening, which can be useful for families:
We spent a day in the beautiful and highly progressive city of Minneapolis, checking out the mall, and gazing in awe at the St. Paul Cathedral:
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts was also magnificent:
And that was pretty much the whole vacation. Minneapolis to Okoboji and back to Minneapolis — a fine, relaxing midwestern family vacation.
The Mazda CX-90 Is Not The Best, But The Used Deals Are Bonkers
So you get the idea here: The CX-90 ain’t all that. Its transmission doesn’t shift particularly smoothly, the ride quality is a bit firm, storage isn’t amazing, space is decent but not great for tall passengers, I’d like passive entry on the rear doors, my son’s arm almost got guillotined, the shifter design seems like a bad idea, and it seems the radiant heat getting through the windows is higher than my wife’s Lexus:
The biggest concern people are going to have, though, is the reliability, which — especially on the early models — seems to be… well, not great. Consumer Reports Predicted Reliability for the CX-90, whether PHEV or not, is bleak.
I’ve read through lots of Reddit and Facebook and forum posts in which owners ask one another “Would you buy this car again?” and answers are usually mixed. There have been plenty of recalls, and many owners complain about software issues/repairs. But some have only good things to say about their vehicle’s reliability. So it’s a crapshoot; are the most recently built CX-90s more reliable than the early ones with teething issues? That’s what many owners suggest, but the jury is still out.
This uncertainty probably contributes to the CX-90’s poor resale value, or, to spin it positively, to the white-hot deals you can get on the second-hand market:
Wow. I am shocked.
A premium, three-row SUV with a turbocharged inline six, an eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive, Apple Carplay, automatic high-beam project headlights, and on and on can be had not even a couple of years old, with 50,000 miles on the clock, for $25 grand.
If it’s not obvious why these are such amazing sales prices, allow me to compare them to those of the Toyota Grand Highlander and Honda Pilot.
[Writer’s note: I just chose random listings, and have no affiliation with any of these dealers. The only dealerships I can vouch for are part of The Autopian’s partner Galpin, which is where I recommend anyone buy their Mazda or Honda. Right now, it looks like no 2025 CX-90s are on the lot, but Galpin does have one of the cheapest 2025 Pilots I’ve seen anywhere. -DT].
Obviously, there are more scientific ways to get average transaction prices on these vehicles, but based on an eye test, it looks like the CX-90 may be the cheapest premium, lightly-used three-row mid-size SUV money can buy. It even seems to be cheaper than even the Kia Telluride and the Jeep Grand Cherokee L.
Seriously, $25,000 for the CX-90 above, with a 280 horsepower turbocharged inline-six that gets a solid 28 mpg highway, all-wheel drive, a nice leatherette interior, great headlights, a useful infotainment system, and a reasonably usable third row? If Mazda managed to figure out the reliability bugs through recalls/changes to later model years, I’d be tempted to buy one, because I really enjoyed driving my family around in this pleasant but imperfect SUV.
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