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Hey there, I'm looking into buying a car and have recently come across the Mazda verisa 2004 as a possible option (there's actually one of these listed on your AA car fair). I've heard that I should stay away from any cars with CVT transmission so I was wondering if you knew whether this car has CVT transmission or standard?

Extra info is that I'm looking for a car that: hasn't done too many km (preferably less than 150,000 km), is at least 1.5L since ill be doing trips between palmy and wellington often and isn't too expensive to maintain i.e. has lots of parts available if anything needs fixing. My budget is around $5k

Cheers.

If you are buying a used Japanese car today, a vast majority of them have CVT transmissions, but these days they're not all bad.

Manufacturers have spent considerable sums on R&D over the years and the technology has evolved from being quite troublesome to become reliable and long-lasting.
The main thing that changed for most was the links on the drive belts, which are constantly moving, going through a constantly changing drive radius and have varying shock loads applied. These used to crack and eventually break. The metallic make-up of the links is now much stronger and is such that the links hold together and don't let go.
In addition to internal major component upgrades, advances have also been made in the torque convertors which some models used and startup clutch packs used by others. In previous generations of CVT, these would apply excessive shock forces on take-off or down low, and would stress the belt. Some also now use clutch packs on the output side, which minimise shock through the belt or chain.
So, to summarise - they're no longer quite the same problem they used to be.

If your budget and the models available are all CVT research them individually and see what others have to say I haven herd of any transmission issues with the Verisa yet

Mazda Axela and Toyota Alex come to mind as good candidates but you may need to stretch you budget a bit