**A Review of the Mazda3: A Reliable and Efficient Car for Everyday Driving**

As I sit here reflecting on my experience with the Mazda3, I am reminded of why I fell in love with this car in the first place. The 2L engine may not be the most potent unit, but it's certainly designed with fuel efficiency in mind. And boy, does it deliver. I've averaged a respectable 37 miles per gallon over the life of my car, which is exactly what I was looking for in a vehicle that wouldn't break the bank.

One of the things I appreciate most about the Mazda3 is its handling and steering. It's a joy to drive on twisty roads, and the car seems to hug the road in all directions. The suspension is smooth, and the ride is comfortable, making it perfect for long road trips or daily commutes. And let me tell you, I've put this car through its paces – from the freezing cold temperatures of winter to the scorching heat of summer – and it's performed admirably in all conditions.

Of course, one of the biggest drawbacks of the Mazda3 is its acceleration. The 2L engine may not have a lot of power, but it's certainly tuned for efficiency. And that's exactly what you get – plenty of torque down low, but not a whole lot of oomph when you need it most. I remember one time when I was driving on the highway and I needed to merge onto a busy road. The car just didn't have enough power to get me up to speed quickly, and I found myself stuck behind slower traffic. But overall, I've come to appreciate the Mazda3's unique character, and it's become one of my favorite driving experiences.

**Tires: A Mix of Good and Bad**

One of the things that really stood out to me when buying this car was the tire situation. The stock tires were actually a decent size, but they didn't exactly offer the best performance in terms of dry grip. They'd squeal and make noise when I was driving on certain roads, especially above 50°F. But I didn't want to go with the ASR touring option, as it would have given me bigger wheels and tires that I just wasn't interested in.

On the other hand, the Michelin Pilot Sport tires I installed later proved to be a game-changer. They offer excellent grip below 50°F, but they do make a ton of noise when you're driving on certain roads. It's almost like the car is screaming at you to slow down! But despite the noise, these tires have really improved my overall driving experience.

**Infotainment: A Hackable System with Plenty of Potential**

One of the things that really impressed me about this Mazda3 was its infotainment system – Mazda Connect. At first glance, it may seem like a standard issue Android-based system, but boy is it wrong! The Mazda Connect system is actually hackable, which means that people have been able to get in and modify it over time.

I remember when I first got this car, the infotainment system was pretty clunky. It took ages to respond to inputs, and the menu system was a nightmare to navigate. But since then, there have been updates and modifications that have really improved its performance. One of the most significant changes is the addition of Android Auto – which Mazda didn't even offer as an option when I first bought this car! The process of getting Android Auto set up on my infotainment system was actually quite straightforward, thanks to some clever tools developed by enthusiasts online.

**Would I Buy Another Mazda in the Future?**

One thing that's really made me think about buying another Mazda in the future is how much I've come to appreciate this car. The 2L engine may not be the most exciting unit, but it's certainly reliable and efficient. And the handling and steering of this car are some of the best I've ever experienced in a vehicle like its class.

In fact, I think that's one of the things that's kept me from buying another Mazda – because now I know what to expect! The Next Generation Mazda3 is rumored to have a turbocharged engine, which would address many of the performance issues that this car has. And when it finally arrives, I'll be on the lookout for it.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow with a title like this video You're Expecting some inflammatory comment on how the Mazda 3 has been a total turd I've had it in the shop a 100 times that it's been nothing but problems and actually that is not the case I haven't had this car in the dealership once in 27,000 mil now that may not seem like a lot of time but for me it's an eternity in fact this is one of the longer periods of time I've kept any car and that's because I like the Mazda 3 a lot I liked it so much that I flew all the way to Albuquerque New Mexico from Illinois to buy this because I could not find a manual transmission five door in this color that was made in Japan uh and that's rare that I actually travel that distance for a new car but I did now after 2 years I want something a little bit different I want something a little bit more fun um I need to experience different cars because now that I'm doing car videos uh turning just having the same car a long time doesn't really give me the diversity that I'm looking for but in that vein let's talk about some of the good and bad of this vehicle now I'm not going to you the hatch is incredibly useful there's a ton of space this makes this almost like a compact SUV but it's a car and I really really enjoyed that part I have fit everything that I've needed to in here and then some now in terms of the bad things about the back is I had to take off the cargo cover this big uh composite tray that they put on because every time you lifted up this hatch and it was kind of here uh pulled up from the strings I cut my head so many times because the cover is like a razor blade it's so sharp I just took it off and I threw it against the wall and I've never put it on again now on to the interior and this is actually one of the main reasons I bought the Mazda 3 it's a more modern feeling cabin you can tell they've borrowed a lot from some of the pre manufacturers here there's no doubt about that but it just works uh the use of materials the diversity of materials soft touch hard touch it doesn't look like super cheap like a lot of cars and it doesn't look like it's trying to be more than it is the things that are bad about the interior is over time this piano gloss plastic while it looks amazing when it's new you're like oh that's just a touch of class now it looks like just disgusting because there's fingerprints there's dust there's dandruff there's just SAS there's all these gross things that have accumulated on it and it doesn't look so nice anymore with the IG Grand Touring you get the little bit better seats the power driver seat the steering wheel all of this is so driver Centric I it really hasn't lost its charm for me over time now if you have a bigger body if you're a girl with a bigger ass wider hips these seats are probably not going to be the best you'd probably want to go up to the Mazda sixer it's just something to look at um I don't have too many complaints about ergonomics here I hate the speedometer layout with this digital tachometer it's really cheesy looking um some of the Plastics are easily scratched down here and again you have a dead pedal that's not covered and I'm going to show you how disgusting this thing looks after winter and I can't get the stains out so that really sucks it's just a total oversight when there's so much attention to detail they totally screwed the pooch on this one so let's take this for a drive and just talk about some of that look at that another Mazda 3 good time to get in here and talk about some of the pros and cons over the course of 27,000 miles there's been some minor things mostly that I can complain about and there's plenty of good things that I like and we're going to go over that now let's start off with the clutch and the transmission if you're having a manual transmission option this has Hill assist which means when you let off the clutch and you're in first gear the brakes will slightly hold at a stop so you don't roll back now that might be good for somebody who is a new driver I'm not and what I found that it does is when I don't have the clutch down I'm in neutral and I want to get going in first right away I'll hit the clutch and put in first and those brakes will still be grabbing at a stop for about a half a second a second and I found that I've stalled this car more than most because it's still holding the brakes and I'm trying to ease into first so a lot of times if I do it quick I actually have to rev up the engine a little bit more and slip the clutch more than I normally would do and that's one annoying part I've asked the dealer if they can disable that feature they said they cannot uh and other cars allow you to disable it so I hope maybe there's a firmware update or an ECU flash for that recently that I don't know about but again annoying second thing is these tires now these are Yokohama Avid s34 they're the Blue Earth low rolling resistant tires and for the most part they're quiet they're compliant and I got the smaller tire size I didn't go with the ASR touring because I didn't want bigger wheels and tires it just pointless for a car like this at least for me with a 2 L and these tires have really good grip below 50° fahren that seems to be their best heat range for dry grip once you get above 50° fenhe they make a ton of noise they squeal at every single turn and it's just really shitty so you actually have to cut back your driving but in the cold you can you can really push this thing a lot more uh like I look forward to 40 and 50° weather because I can drive a lot harder and it has a lot more dry grip now as these tires have worn the longitudal grip getting going and a straight line sucks uh they've really shown that they haven't worn well in that regard they're just an average tire so what do you expect from just a factory car I mean but the thing is they do help to get good fuel efficiency I've averaged about 37 m per gallon over the life of this car which is exactly why I wanted it mostly I didn't want a performance car here I wanted something to put a lot of miles on that I wouldn't have to piss away a lot of money on I did that enough with the last couple cars I've owned now let's talk about acceleration uh the 2 L you know you don't buy this car for straight line performance it's the same motor that's in the Miata the new ND Miata and in this car the way that it's geared it feels really slow aish especially when it gets hotter out now the benefit is is you do have a lot of torque it's tuned to give you a lot of torque down low you feel you feel like it's building a lot of power up till about 3500 4,000 RPMs and you want to wind it out and you realize nothing's happening and it's just again partially it's the gearing partially because it's a 2 L and it's just a four-cylinder it's designed for efficiency here and that's just what it is if you're okay and you want maximum fuel efficiency you're going to like this car is as I have the last part of this is infotainment uh this Mazda connect system it's been you know changed hands in terms of development companies but they've continued to make improvements on it for stability sake it Still Remains one of the quicker head units to use and as I stated in my first review it is hackable which means because it's a Linux based or Unix based operator system uh people were able to gain Rude access to it very early on which means you can get in and change some things so the biggest thing recently is you can actually add Android auto on here now yes it requires a little bit of uh research online but people have made tools that you plug in via USB it will patch the operating system and add Android auto to the application section here and you can use Android auto which Mazda doesn't even have as an option so again you know that's what I talked about right at the very beginning when you have an infotainment system like this uh let's just say Mazda abandons it completely it's nice to know that you can get in and make some modifications to it for long-term ownership sake it it's really important in a world where we're just don't have any standardization and companies do whatever the hell they want and the customer gets screwed over in the end it's nice to be able to hack this and modify it the big question is would I do this all over again would I buy the Mazda 3 or would I recommend it and the resounding answer is yes this has been a really good car from fuel efficiency almost pushing 40 m to the gallon great steering really good handling for what it is of course uh and a pretty decent manual gearbox all those things added together just kind of delete all the little nuances and annoyances that I found with it this is a really good car to look at especially now that you can find them in the used Market especially for like what I'm looking at selling my car for man it's it's kind of a no-brainer versus buying new if if you don't have the money to buy a new one the second part of this is would I buy a Mazda in the future and I think this was the start of it for me this was kind of their first new generation Mazda and um I would actually look at buying a new Mazda 3 for the Next Generation when they finally get a turbo in here because it would solve a lot of the issues with kind of you know performance that it doesn't have with the two ler or even the 2.5now with a title like this video You're Expecting some inflammatory comment on how the Mazda 3 has been a total turd I've had it in the shop a 100 times that it's been nothing but problems and actually that is not the case I haven't had this car in the dealership once in 27,000 mil now that may not seem like a lot of time but for me it's an eternity in fact this is one of the longer periods of time I've kept any car and that's because I like the Mazda 3 a lot I liked it so much that I flew all the way to Albuquerque New Mexico from Illinois to buy this because I could not find a manual transmission five door in this color that was made in Japan uh and that's rare that I actually travel that distance for a new car but I did now after 2 years I want something a little bit different I want something a little bit more fun um I need to experience different cars because now that I'm doing car videos uh turning just having the same car a long time doesn't really give me the diversity that I'm looking for but in that vein let's talk about some of the good and bad of this vehicle now I'm not going to you the hatch is incredibly useful there's a ton of space this makes this almost like a compact SUV but it's a car and I really really enjoyed that part I have fit everything that I've needed to in here and then some now in terms of the bad things about the back is I had to take off the cargo cover this big uh composite tray that they put on because every time you lifted up this hatch and it was kind of here uh pulled up from the strings I cut my head so many times because the cover is like a razor blade it's so sharp I just took it off and I threw it against the wall and I've never put it on again now on to the interior and this is actually one of the main reasons I bought the Mazda 3 it's a more modern feeling cabin you can tell they've borrowed a lot from some of the pre manufacturers here there's no doubt about that but it just works uh the use of materials the diversity of materials soft touch hard touch it doesn't look like super cheap like a lot of cars and it doesn't look like it's trying to be more than it is the things that are bad about the interior is over time this piano gloss plastic while it looks amazing when it's new you're like oh that's just a touch of class now it looks like just disgusting because there's fingerprints there's dust there's dandruff there's just SAS there's all these gross things that have accumulated on it and it doesn't look so nice anymore with the IG Grand Touring you get the little bit better seats the power driver seat the steering wheel all of this is so driver Centric I it really hasn't lost its charm for me over time now if you have a bigger body if you're a girl with a bigger ass wider hips these seats are probably not going to be the best you'd probably want to go up to the Mazda sixer it's just something to look at um I don't have too many complaints about ergonomics here I hate the speedometer layout with this digital tachometer it's really cheesy looking um some of the Plastics are easily scratched down here and again you have a dead pedal that's not covered and I'm going to show you how disgusting this thing looks after winter and I can't get the stains out so that really sucks it's just a total oversight when there's so much attention to detail they totally screwed the pooch on this one so let's take this for a drive and just talk about some of that look at that another Mazda 3 good time to get in here and talk about some of the pros and cons over the course of 27,000 miles there's been some minor things mostly that I can complain about and there's plenty of good things that I like and we're going to go over that now let's start off with the clutch and the transmission if you're having a manual transmission option this has Hill assist which means when you let off the clutch and you're in first gear the brakes will slightly hold at a stop so you don't roll back now that might be good for somebody who is a new driver I'm not and what I found that it does is when I don't have the clutch down I'm in neutral and I want to get going in first right away I'll hit the clutch and put in first and those brakes will still be grabbing at a stop for about a half a second a second and I found that I've stalled this car more than most because it's still holding the brakes and I'm trying to ease into first so a lot of times if I do it quick I actually have to rev up the engine a little bit more and slip the clutch more than I normally would do and that's one annoying part I've asked the dealer if they can disable that feature they said they cannot uh and other cars allow you to disable it so I hope maybe there's a firmware update or an ECU flash for that recently that I don't know about but again annoying second thing is these tires now these are Yokohama Avid s34 they're the Blue Earth low rolling resistant tires and for the most part they're quiet they're compliant and I got the smaller tire size I didn't go with the ASR touring because I didn't want bigger wheels and tires it just pointless for a car like this at least for me with a 2 L and these tires have really good grip below 50° fahren that seems to be their best heat range for dry grip once you get above 50° fenhe they make a ton of noise they squeal at every single turn and it's just really shitty so you actually have to cut back your driving but in the cold you can you can really push this thing a lot more uh like I look forward to 40 and 50° weather because I can drive a lot harder and it has a lot more dry grip now as these tires have worn the longitudal grip getting going and a straight line sucks uh they've really shown that they haven't worn well in that regard they're just an average tire so what do you expect from just a factory car I mean but the thing is they do help to get good fuel efficiency I've averaged about 37 m per gallon over the life of this car which is exactly why I wanted it mostly I didn't want a performance car here I wanted something to put a lot of miles on that I wouldn't have to piss away a lot of money on I did that enough with the last couple cars I've owned now let's talk about acceleration uh the 2 L you know you don't buy this car for straight line performance it's the same motor that's in the Miata the new ND Miata and in this car the way that it's geared it feels really slow aish especially when it gets hotter out now the benefit is is you do have a lot of torque it's tuned to give you a lot of torque down low you feel you feel like it's building a lot of power up till about 3500 4,000 RPMs and you want to wind it out and you realize nothing's happening and it's just again partially it's the gearing partially because it's a 2 L and it's just a four-cylinder it's designed for efficiency here and that's just what it is if you're okay and you want maximum fuel efficiency you're going to like this car is as I have the last part of this is infotainment uh this Mazda connect system it's been you know changed hands in terms of development companies but they've continued to make improvements on it for stability sake it Still Remains one of the quicker head units to use and as I stated in my first review it is hackable which means because it's a Linux based or Unix based operator system uh people were able to gain Rude access to it very early on which means you can get in and change some things so the biggest thing recently is you can actually add Android auto on here now yes it requires a little bit of uh research online but people have made tools that you plug in via USB it will patch the operating system and add Android auto to the application section here and you can use Android auto which Mazda doesn't even have as an option so again you know that's what I talked about right at the very beginning when you have an infotainment system like this uh let's just say Mazda abandons it completely it's nice to know that you can get in and make some modifications to it for long-term ownership sake it it's really important in a world where we're just don't have any standardization and companies do whatever the hell they want and the customer gets screwed over in the end it's nice to be able to hack this and modify it the big question is would I do this all over again would I buy the Mazda 3 or would I recommend it and the resounding answer is yes this has been a really good car from fuel efficiency almost pushing 40 m to the gallon great steering really good handling for what it is of course uh and a pretty decent manual gearbox all those things added together just kind of delete all the little nuances and annoyances that I found with it this is a really good car to look at especially now that you can find them in the used Market especially for like what I'm looking at selling my car for man it's it's kind of a no-brainer versus buying new if if you don't have the money to buy a new one the second part of this is would I buy a Mazda in the future and I think this was the start of it for me this was kind of their first new generation Mazda and um I would actually look at buying a new Mazda 3 for the Next Generation when they finally get a turbo in here because it would solve a lot of the issues with kind of you know performance that it doesn't have with the two ler or even the 2.5\n"