We had no plans to be buying a new car right now, but with severe hail damage to our Honda Pilot costing over $23,000 to repair the insurance company decided to total it. We have a road trip coming up so we we needed to get something quick.

We were curious to check out the Kia Telluride but those are impossible to buy without a 6 month wait. I had no interest in the BMW X5 since they haven’t done much of anything with it for years. We looked at another Honda Pilot but that just seemed incredibly boring. Tammy did some heavy research and found Morrie’s Mazda had two Mazda CX-9’s on the lot.

She test drove the Mazda CX-9 Carbon Edition in the morning and liked it. Given our time pressure, she told me to head to the dealership later in the day and if I liked it, buy it.

We pick it up this week. One banner feature for me is cooled front seats. I’ve always wanted that. And oddly this is the first car we have owned that has Apple CarPlay.

Also see list of vehicles.