I bought a 2006 Mazda 5 "micro" minivan off my son-in-law's mother several months ago. It has 136,000 miles on it, and runs great. However, the rear suspension is toast, and it needed the passenger side half shaft up front. I replaced the half shaft, and will do the other side "just because". The rear suspensions are known to prematurely wear out the rear tires (like, within 10,000 miles!), as they have such negative camber from the factory, and no way to adjust the camber at the back. Also, the rear springs are weak, thereby exacerbating the problem. Add to that the upper shock mounts are cast aluminum, and prone to breaking, and you have a real clusterfuck going on back there. So I bought new rear shocks, aftermarket
steel upper shock mounts, adjustable upper control arms, and heavier springs out of a Mazda CX-7 AWD to hike up the ass a bit. By the time I'm done, I'll barely break even when I go to sell it, but at least it'll make a nice little commuter for someone.
As for the CVT transmissions, my wife has 100,000 on her 2015 Honda CR-V AWD, and has never had an issue with it. My son-in-law has a 2012 Nissan Altima with a CVT, and he's pushing 170,000 miles on it without issue. 2012 is supposed to be one of the bad years for Nissan's CVT, but his seems to be just dandy.
