I currently drive a Mazda 3 and am contemplating upgrading to a CX-9. My main motivation is more ground clearance (I live in Oregon and enjoy outdoor activities off some questionable roads which my car cannot navigate), quieter ride (my car is loud as hell at freeway speeds) and more room (my 6' 3" son is a bit cramped in the 3 and 5 passengers is tight). I was thinking about a CX-5 for a while but I think the extra seats and room in the 9 might be better for occasional usage.
All things considered I'd prefer not to have AWD, save myself some money on the purchase price and get 2mpg better gas mileage. However I'm a little worried about some rutted dirt roads I would occasionally drive on. Here is an example of this kind of road:
I have driven this road with a RWD pickup before and it was fine. Which makes me think RWD is probably not needed, but this road is dirt with some fairly deep ruts and rocks. No major slopes though, I'm not going to be doing any rock crawling or hard offroading. I also occasionally drive into the mountains in winter where roads can be a bit rough but when they get bad we throw on snow chains and FWD cars are fine with that.
Other than that I live in a fairly moderate climate. It rarely snows and when it does once every few years it's easy enough to just stay home (we don't really have plows, and they don't salt the roads) so I'm not really concerned about AWD for that. Mostly the outdoor adventures that take me on questionable forest service roads or ice packed mountain highways.
All things considered I'd prefer not to have AWD, save myself some money on the purchase price and get 2mpg better gas mileage. However I'm a little worried about some rutted dirt roads I would occasionally drive on. Here is an example of this kind of road:
I have driven this road with a RWD pickup before and it was fine. Which makes me think RWD is probably not needed, but this road is dirt with some fairly deep ruts and rocks. No major slopes though, I'm not going to be doing any rock crawling or hard offroading. I also occasionally drive into the mountains in winter where roads can be a bit rough but when they get bad we throw on snow chains and FWD cars are fine with that.
Other than that I live in a fairly moderate climate. It rarely snows and when it does once every few years it's easy enough to just stay home (we don't really have plows, and they don't salt the roads) so I'm not really concerned about AWD for that. Mostly the outdoor adventures that take me on questionable forest service roads or ice packed mountain highways.