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2020 Mazda CX-9 vs 2021 Mazda CX-9

Two adjacent model years of the Mazda CX-9, side by side. Every figure is a raw NHTSA/EPA count — not normalized by how many were sold.

Side by side: identical recall campaigns (1 each), and 2020 CX-9 has fewer recorded owner complaints (19 vs 35). Both carry NHTSA crash ratings, and neither has EPA fuel-economy data in our dataset.

Metric2020 Mazda CX-92021 Mazda CX-9
Recall campaigns11
Owner complaints1935
NHTSA investigations00
NHTSA crash ratingRated by NHTSARated by NHTSA
EPA fuel economy

Where these two actually differ

Both carry 1 recall campaign, so recall history does not separate them. A campaign can still cover very different defects on each vehicle — read both records before treating the tie as equivalence.

2021 Mazda CX-9 has drawn 16 more owner complaints (35 against 19). Complaints are self-reported to NHTSA and scale with how many were sold, so treat the pattern of what owners report as more informative than the total.

Both have been crash-tested by NHTSA, so their star ratings are directly comparable — they were assessed under the same program in the same year.

Counts are raw NHTSA and EPA totals for each model year. They are not adjusted for how many of each vehicle were sold, so a high-volume model will tend to show more of everything — a larger complaint count is not by itself evidence of a worse car. Use the per-vehicle reports for the underlying records.

How to read this

  • A green check marks the lower raw count — fewer recorded issues, not a declared winner.
  • Complaint totals are not normalized by vehicle population; a big-seller shows more of everything.
  • Where a rating or EPA record is absent, that is missing data — not evidence of safety.