As a reminder, 5% of every thing made will fail or is faulty or both no matter the source, brand or manufacturer.
Spacecraft never have had trouble getting off the ground on the first attempt, wrong, and they are put together by folks in white clean room suits unlike our vehicles.
Research and luck of the draw is the key to ''happy motoring'' vehicle choices.
You couldn't give me a CVT or Hybrid vehicle as I'm a high mileage long term owner, those cars are short term lease mobiles for under 36k mile still in warranty usage. Yeah there are exceptions but those are the ones owned by maintenance freaks like myself. I'll add turbo's to my no list also.
Magazine reviews are a joke, the rags use those reviews as ad money generators.
These sites are where it's at, you just have to filter out who is knowledgeable about vehicles and who isn't on their postings.
The last generation of a model may be worst than the current or visa versa, never go with the first year of a new gen.
Actually 100% of everything made will fail, given enough time....
Cars are typically designed to achieve 10-15 yrs and 150,000 miles, manufacturer dependent. There are roughly 30,000 parts in a car (per Toyota, counting everything as small as screws). Component suppliers (to the automotive industry) have their part failures rated in ppm (parts per million). Field part failures are returned back to the manufacturer, who then have to go through a 8D process -- automotive industry failure evaluation and containment process, and yes, I was a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the Automotive Electronics Counsel (AEC) and dealt with this pains.
Part failures (warranties) are undesirable, both to companies like GM and well as to their suppliers, as it costs $$$.
With 30,000 parts, all with a 10 ppm failure rate, you have a 50/50 chance of having a perfect car. Else, you have a failure which your may not notice (screw too big and rammed into the hole), or have one big enough for a warranty repair (bad pump).
While I share your mature technology values (as an owner of a 17 year V8 Suburban with 4 spd auto, which only experienced a fuel pump failure in its life -- beyond normal wear items), there are applications where items such as CVT and turbos add value, of which the Malibu is one example (though I would still recommend the bigger 2.0 L engine as it need not spend as much time in boost).
For the 1.5 L, I am not sure I would recommend the 9 spd over the CVT....instead I would buy the 2016 Premier with the Aisen trans (get the recalls fixed, and live with the shorter battery life due to the turbo under hood heat, especially in AZ).