We got the car brand new. It was so new, it only had 4 miles on the odometer when we bought it. Technically it is a "lease with an option to buy" but this way there is less than 0.3% interest for 3 years. There are still "gotcha" fees that I'll have to pay eventually but it was a better deal than an outright purchase. We wanted to buy new anyway and now we have an out if we change out minds. We take good care of cars and keep them forever. Buying new will let us keep the car longer since there is no rough wear from previous owners who don't care about maintaining vehicles. In my estimation, we are paying more up front for the new car but after 5+ years, we begin to recoup the extra money because there is less wear on the vehicle, therefore less maintenance is required.
The 2018 Mazda CX-5 is also the safest car on the road in America. That was one of our motivations for this purchase. When I was buying insurance for the vehicle, I was talking with the insurance agent on the phone. When she was researching what discounts I was eligible for, she got to safety feature discounts. As she began to read off the safety features she said, "Front airbags, side airbags, front head air bags, rear head air bags, cross-traffic alert, .... Wow this has a lot of safety features!" Needless to say she didn't repeat all of them and I got the full safety discount available. Mazda makes sure you don't miss the features either and instead of designing safety features to be hidden for aesthetics, it's the opposite, they are prominently displayed. I had no difficulty whatsoever finding the anchor bars for Ethan's child safety seat.
