Mazda 3 Turbo Finale | Blessing and Curse of Evolution

This video is going to serve as our closeout episode to our long-term Mazda 3 test car. This Mazda 3 all-wheel drive turbo premium is a vehicle we've had for the last six months and we've put approximately 13,000 miles on it. It's been subjected to a lot. A midwestern winter where we threw it on snow tires, a spring, and now the summer of the midwest. It's served as a camera car, our daily driver, and of course our road trip vehicle. First off, let's talk about price once again. This vehicle is expensive. It's in the high $30,000 range. With the aero package, the premium all-wheel drive, and the turbo engine, this Mazda 3 is about $38,000, which is a lot of money. This, however, Mazda has positioned not as an entry-level compact car, but as an entry-level luxury vehicle. This is supposed to compete against things like the Audi A3, the CLA, and the BMW 2 Series. And as we're going to talk about in the shop, there's some pros and cons being in that competition set. Now, I think it's important we talk about the interior space, starting with the cons first. As you already are probably well aware, this is not the largest vehicle in the world. It doesn't have the biggest hatch. The backseat, if you have taller drivers, is not going to be large enough for full-size adults. There's also not the best visibility out the rear, and the A-pillars themselves are very large in this car. There's also a lot of piano black, both on the window controls, around the jog dial or D-pad, and around the shifter. And after 13,000 miles, they are massively scratched up. They have little micro scratches everywhere. They're covered in biohazard material and dust. And this is one of good examples of why piano black should not be in high-traffic-use areas. Things are going to be constantly touching. Now, pros. This is a remarkably relaxing interior space. While this may not be the nicest interior space you'll ever be in, for the class of car, it looks unique, it's relaxing, everything is easy to use. Whether it be the infotainment, which while, yes, it doesn't have a touchscreen, you realize quickly that Mazda was right. The D-pad in this car makes it very easy to navigate all the menus. Wired Apple CarPlay works well. Your physical HVAC controls can be operated with gloves, so you don't have to tip and tap at things. The heated seats work well. The heated steering wheel works well. The steering wheel controls are logical. The gauge cluster is minimalist, so you're not flipping around to find the information you need. It's a simple, relaxing cabin. Visibility. While, yes, when you first get in the car, you realize that there are some blind spots, but the more you spend time in this car, the more you get used to it, and combine that with your 360 camera, which you can activate by hitting this button to the left of the wheel, you don't really seem to care that much. The driving position, doesn't matter how tall you are, is excellent in this car. And the seats, while they look basic, they are very, very comfortable. The audio system in this car, as well, the Bose audio system. No, it's not a Bowers and Wilkins out of a BMW, or a Meridian out of a Range Rover, but if you keep your expectations realistic, this is probably every bit as good as the entry-level Harmans in like a 2 Series or a CL8. They did a good job with speaker placement, and I feel like if you wanted to improve the audio system further, all you would have to do is put some components in the doors, because the cabin itself is already fairly quiet for the vehicle it is. The last thing I'm going to bring up, as well, is when you're in this car for a long period of time, on the highway, sitting in traffic, you quickly forget that you're in a vehicle that may not be the most premium underneath. It really is a relaxing car to sit in traffic with. So, with all that said, I think it's time for us to head into the shop. Never even give me a minute to get a lunch break. Never even give me a minute to get a lunch break here. Oh god, she's looking good. Oh, finally. You know, last time I had a meatball sub, Jack, you wouldn't even let me get a meatball sub. Are you? Don't turn here. This isn't. Turn around, get us back on the highway. I gotta get to Autobahn. My Ferraris are tuned up with the schedule. Maximum profits, maximum cars, maximum meatballs. I want tux mats in every car, Jack. Every car. We don't get tux mats, we're out of business here. I want you to call them. I want you to tell them there wasn't, I asked for six meatballs here. They gave me five and there's no sweet peppers on my beef. God damn it. This isn't sugar free. I'm borderline diabetic and they're giving me sugar ice cream. I want maximum dollars. I want tux mats in every car, every car, not just one, all of them. As an award-winning small business owner, there's a few enemies of mine. That's time, personnel problems, and dirty carpets in my cars. And having a guy like Jack, he just doesn't understand the bottom line of having a dirty carpet. I've instructed him multiple times. You gotta have tux mats on every car because when I bring in some of my other family's children in here, even a car like the Mazda 3, it could be catastrophic for me at a car show if there's a meatball stain on the carpet or an ice cream cone stuck on the windshield. I could go wrong in my life and floor mats can't be one of them. And I suggest yourself, you know, if you take a look at your life and take a look in your mirror and say, what can I do? How can I improve myself? It's pretty obvious. If you're, if you're working with the factory carpet floor mats, you're running a high risk or a high probability of ruining your carpets in your car. And it's telling you from somebody with awards like myself that not having to deal with that allows me to think about my next trophy, my next engagement. So I hop over on tuxmats.com and I think to myself, what floor mats am I going to order today? And I challenge you to do the same thing. Mark, we're in the shop with our long-term Mazda 3 all-wheel drive. Some housekeeping things to get out of the way. First, fuel economy. Since we swapped back to the OE spec Bridgestones, they're all seasons, gets about 29 miles per gallon, which is a large improvement. It's like four or five miles per gallon. And the internal noise of this vehicle dropped dramatically. Now it's sort of in line with what you're hoping for from a entry-level luxury. You're talking about from the Blizzacks, the winter cars that were on there before. Okay. The Blizzacks are amazing in the snow, but obviously they're a louder tire. That does hurt fuel economy and handling for the sake of getting you through our Midwestern winters. I would still recommend running snow tires on this car, despite the all-wheel drive, because you need to be able to stop in the snow, turn, all other fun stuff. From a general overview, if this is your first time looking at the underneath of the Mazda 3, can you walk me through some of the highlights, Mark? Yeah. They have moved away from an independent rear suspension to a torsion beam, which we've talked about a lot in our previous videos. The concept here was to improve packaging and move a lot of those resources and engineering costs to the interior where they needed to do a complete revamp. It's a quieter car. There is more sound insulation, more NVH reduction, more aero panels throughout the car. It is a softer, more softly sprung car, kind of deviating a bit from Mazda's philosophy of, you know, being able to whip it around. So they've found some middle ground here in how they want to do things in terms of luxurifying the Mazda lineup, and this was their first attempt at doing it. Yes, and to reiterate, the reason why this was never included in like our five-way comparison test is this is not a hot hatch. This was not designed to be a hot hatch. It was not designed to be sporty outside of the way it looks. This is an entry-level luxury car, so it is softly sprung. You don't have adaptive dampers. It doesn't oversteer. That's not the kind of car it's meant to be. It's supposed to be a secure driving experience. All right, let's talk about the reliability part of this vehicle. During my 13,000 miles in six months, so basically I drove a year's worth of mileage in six months, the only thing that went wrong other than rattles and squeaks, which solved themselves by rattling themselves back into place, was I had an infotainment error that had to get reset by the dealership. Here's the error code. It was essentially just a software issue. They updated the vehicle. It went away. The other things to bring up are general service costs. Despite this being an entry-level luxury car, it's still a Mazda, so it does not take a lot of oil. Your service costs are less than $100. Oil change, tires, they're 18s. I think they're like $800, $900 a set, which sounds like a lot, but it's pretty average. Then the last thing to talk about as well is your brake costs. They're really, really cheap. It's like $100 a rotor. Yeah, I think that's the thing with this car. They're trying to go upmarket a bit, like the luxury style thing, but your consumables and running costs are more closely related to an economy car. I know if you're really on the budget side, and I know people that own this, they look at tire costs, they look at brake costs, then their heads are like exploding. This is so expensive, but it's really not. It's right in line with every other economy car or more affordable vehicle. It's just everything in terms of maintenance has gone up in terms of cost across the board. It's still cheaper than the Lincoln BMW 2 Series, the CLA, and Audi A3 to keep on the road. Mark, I think it's time for us to go take this for a quick drive. Okay, I'm ready, Jack. I drove this car once, and you've driven it a million times. Yeah, getting all choked up, Mark. I've done 13,000 miles in six months. It's hard to say goodbye to Takumi craftsmanship, but this is our wrap-up drive in the Mazda 3 all-wheel drive turbo. We did a comparison test with the Integra, and it lost, but what I will say about this car after 13,000 miles with it in six months is it's a car that is good because you never think about it. I mean, you never think about it. You've had a long day at work. You don't want to cook food. You've got to drive 30 minutes to go to a restaurant to pick up takeout. You can hop in this car and just be comfortable. You don't think about the drive train. You don't think about road noise. It's a car that is a peaceful experience. You don't think about anything, and that's one of the things that I've really come to appreciate about this vehicle. It's never too noisy. It's never too rough. It's never too conspicuous. No one looks at you in this thing. It's this great daily driver, and yes, there are compromises with the drive train and the reliability and the interior space, but it's just something you get into when you have to drive to work. You drive on road trips. You putt around in it. It's a very, very good entry level luxury car. What you just spewed out at me sounds like it could be basically any car then. Yes, it could. I mean, so what's good about it then? I mean, it's just basically you said what most every single car does today that's boring and sedate and calm and comfortable. What does this really do better than some of the competition that's at the same price? I think versus something like let's look at what this car is supposed to be, right? We've talked about it in the past, but Mazda designed the Mazda3 to be sort of a more premium offering in the compact space, right? Unlike a Civic, which is really supposed to be a mass transportation vehicle or an Elantra, this is supposed to almost push into something like an Audi A3, a CLA, BMW 2 Series, or a new Integra, and all of those cars cost more to run other than the Integra. They don't have as logically laid out of an interior space, and they don't have that sort of Japanese-y, less generic feel that Mazda does really, really well, and I think that's the strength of this car. It's definitely not the driving experience, right? This car is let down by the fact that it's got a torsion beam rear end. It's not a car that you want to drive flat out, as we talked about in the shop segment. The reason why this is never included in a hot hatch comparison is it's not a hot hatch. Yeah. When you speak to someone like Dave Coleman, like I did at the CX-90 launch, he's like, I wish I could have made this a hot hatchback. I wish I could have made this a car with faster steering and a more loose rear end that wanted to rotate in the corners, but that's not what Japan wanted. They wanted a luxury car, and I think in that way, it's a car that you feel relaxed when you're in, and I think that's one of the things I appreciate about it, like the infotainment works well for the most part. It's a car that doesn't drink a lot of gas. The drivetrain's got a lot of low-end torque, so you don't have to rev the thing out. Their head bob mentality, where they don't want a lot of movement in your head when you go around corners, and the low jerk motions do make this a less fatiguing car, so when you've had a long day, when you're like pissed off at the world and you can get in this, you don't care, and that's the thing that I really, really have come to appreciate about this car after spending so much time in it. When I drove it originally, you know, I think there's something to be said about the fact that, and we had this conversation yesterday, where so many of these cars that we get into, it's, they're all good to a certain extent. They all do the same thing. They're all trying to copy each other, but some of the x-factor is what we're dealing with right now, the interior space and the exterior design. Do you get a sense of, like, I like to look at this car. I feel something when I'm sitting in it. I feel like that was more than just, it feels more than just it was shitted out. It may do all the similar things in terms of driving as other cars, but I do feel like there's a sense of pride they took in the exterior and interior design that a lot of the cars in this price point or what they're trying to do here don't have. The A3 is really generic looking. The 2 Series Grand Coupe, I think, is hideous. The Integra has the same problem the Civic has, where I feel like while the exterior styling is highly functional, because you have much better visibility in this car, I think the Mazda 3 at its price point is one of the best looking cars, period. It's, it's, it's a mixed bag. It really is, and I thought, you know, I would really enjoy owning this car, and the more time I'm spending it, the more that I am, I have more mixed feelings a lot because the outside and the inside don't match the driving experience. It is too much of a sedate car where it could use a little bit more personality, and I know you brought it up. The things that it does well are exactly the things that hurts it for a car like this because we don't have traditional hatchback cars anymore. They're relegated to like shitbox cars now, or they're killing them off completely. So to have a unique niche car like this, I feel like it needs to deliver a little bit more emotional high in the driving part that this doesn't have, although there's nothing wrong with it either, and I, I don't, I don't know what the right answer is because, again, the enthusiasts will always say they want more and more and more, and then nobody buys them anyway. So would this be a better car if it, if it was more edgy and more fun to drive? If we lived in an alternate reality, I could have driven, you know, the Dave Coleman creation, like a manual Mazda 3 with high sprint rates in the rear, even with the torsion beam, you could get it to rotate, you know, with faster steering. That might have been a really fun car to drive, but to your point, you know, I think, given that this is an expensive car, it's $36,000, I just, I feel like the people who are buying this car just want a luxury vehicle, right? Like the hot hatch segment is a weird place to be in because all of the cars that are hatches, like your Type R, are hyper-expensive and hyper-focused. Those aren't even real hatchbacks either, they're more liftbacks. Yeah, the hatchback car is, you can count on one hand how many actual hatchback cars there are in this, this zone of basically $20,000 to $50,000 anymore. I do think the one thing I will appreciate about having this for a long time, though, is my, where you are more mixed on this vehicle because you don't actually live with it, because I lived with this car for a long period of time, my enjoyment of the car greatly increased, and it's that car where you never feel like it can't accomplish the task it needs to, right? You know, you're on a long distance road trip, it's comfortable. You're going to work, it's comfortable. When you need to merge on the highway quickly, you know, it's more than capable of doing that, and the fact that it's one of those jack-of-all-trade cars that doesn't feel like a hyper-generic shitbox definitely is a strength. So, Mark, with that, as we're about to get t-boned, luckily you have all that low-end torque. Yeah, that's a cool-y torque, Mark. It's time for us to head in on the final thoughts. What do you think? Sounds good to me. Final thoughts on our long-term Mazda3 turbo all-wheel drive hatch. This is a very good car. It is a car that the more you spend time with, as I found out, the more you appreciate how comfortable and relaxing it really is. It, however, is a lot of money. As Tess said, this thing was like $38,000, which for a vehicle with a torsion bar rear suspension, non-adaptive dampers, and really an economy car-based architecture, is a very, very big ask. And you have to be someone who's specifically looking for a car like this. This is essentially a Japanese Audi A3, and if you go into it looking for that, and that is your expectation in your daily driver, you'll really appreciate what this car has to offer. That being said, I think for most people who want 95% of what this all-wheel drive turbo hatch has to offer, I would get a regular naturally aspirated model. By spending under $30,000, you can get with a manual or an automatic, and other than the performance in a straight line and the all-wheel drive capability, you'll be getting the same package. And honestly, with snow tires, you'll probably be mostly as capable in bad weather, and you'll be getting better fuel economy, thus lower running costs. So with that, thanks for watching, and I hope to see you soon.