I prefer a small displacement turbo engine.....I had the large 2,5 litre Skyactiv with the Mazda3 and that was quite disappointing. Practically worse than turbo lag, basically nothing happened below 2750rpm so if you were caught in the wrong gear at the wrong time, you were kind of stuck waiting for the engine to get into the powerband. The tall final drive didn't help. It felt a bit coarse at high revs too, not something I wanted to keep at the redline all day. Not that I would, because not much happened above 5500rpm either, mostly noise. Plus, fuel consumption was disappointing on the autoroutes.
Plus, in a lot of countries, the vehicle tax is partly based on displacement.
Engines are all pretty reliable thesedays.