What would you choose...

Mazda5 ("the mini-minivan")--'07ish,


or Toyota Highlander--'04ish?


My thoughts:

The Mazda has a split second row--I love this even though it makes for 6 seats instead of 7. It's probably the biggest perk for me, randomly enough, but I think that makes sense since the second row will be full of car seats and therefore difficult to fold down to get to the back in a Highlander, should you want to.

The Mazda is sporty and cute, which is hard to tell from the picture--you can best appreciate its mini-ness in person. If you are a guy or otherwise like trucks/big cars, this might not be a huge selling point, but I like it. It has sliding doors. So, lots of perks of a minivan, without actually being a minivan.

The Toyota, though we need to go a little older to stay in our price range (we'd go older on the Mazda if we could), is more common and more available and therefore we have more choices--leather seats (not an option for our price range in the Mazda), automatic seats, perhaps even heated seats, things like that. 4-wheel drive, which you can't get in a Mazda5. Also, the Mazda5 doesn't have electronic stability control, which some would argue you don't need in a smaller vehicle, though it's going to be required in all cars within a few years. It does have an ActiveMatic transmission (similar to Tiptronic), which took me a second to realize, as I tried to get up to 35 while in first gear on a busy street a few weeks ago.

I don't love that every time I drive anywhere I see at least 3 Highlanders. (Although as Matt says, "There's a reason for that.") I don't love the look of the Highlander but I like it better than most smaller SUVs; in general, most SUVs and minivans seem bloated to me.

The two are in a similar price range and have a similar amount of space inside--both have third rows which will mostly remain folded down--the Mazda has slightly less cargo space behind the third row and slightly less space between the first and second rows, but because of the split middle and the windows, it looks roomier inside than the Toyota. The Mazda is a 4-cylinder and Toyota is 6...meaning we either get better gas mileage or more power. The Mazda would be newer, since the first model built was in '06, but again, more perks like leather seats are available in the Toyota. Also, for our price range and availability in the area, we'd probably have to buy a Mazda that was previously a rental (with 30K-ish miles on an '07).

I like the way they drive about equally. They are both built on car chassies.

I can't tell you much about colors, since we have been looking at a few different ones, but for example, of what we drove today, the Highlander was black and the Mazda was silver. Most likely we'd get leather seats in a Highlander and upholstered in a Mazda. We're planning to drive a few more on Monday.

Any thoughts? I think in general we're both leaning toward the Highlander, but I've gone back and forth a few times, and it will depend on the specific combination of price, miles, condition, etc. since we're buying used.

We'll most likely buy one or the other this week.