I'm in the market for a 3 row SUV and I've decided to go with either a 2017 Toyota Highlander or a 2018 Mazda CX-9. They're about the same price and have about the same mileage (around 50k miles). I plan to drive this car for a long time and would love to get 300k+ miles out of it. I love the reliability of Toyota but I love the drive-ability of the CX-9. Since the CX-9 has a 4 cylinder turbo engine should I assume that it won't last as long as the Highlander's 6 cylinder engine? Or am I being overly cautious and getting 300k miles out of either is a completely reasonable assumption?
On that one I would actually go with the Highlander. You want the most life you can get out of your cars and the Highlander will do that. 2018 was the first year of a Turbo 4 cylinder in the Mazda and they are better with their naturally aspirated Skyactiv engines so I would skip on the CX-9. About the 300k miles, you are not being too cautious in fact I don't believe the Mazda could go 300k trouble free miles. In your context I would go Highlander by far.
For the same price and mileage, definitely go with the Toyota Highlander. Naturally aspirated engines (esp. the true and tried Toyota V6) will always last longer than the turbo charged GDI engines, all else being equal. Also the Mazda engine is a Skyactive-G engine which is direct injection only so the engine will be susceptible to carbon build up; that’s on top of the added complexity of turbocharging which hadn’t been around that long in Mazdas, so not exactly true and tried yet. The Toyota NA V6 has both port and direct injection so not susceptible to carbon buildup. Also, Skyactive-G engines manufactured in 2018 and later had an additional feature called cylinder deactivation which adds a whole new level of complexity and potential for problems (collapsed lifters, etc.)
