Our 2016 Mazda3 is excellent.
It’s the SE-L Nav, I didn’t want the Sport because of a few things and the SE-L fitted the bill perfectly as the DD for SWMBO, and I like it a lot for long legged cruising on heavily loaded holiday trips.
£35 tax.
It was a lucky bargain price as a one month old pre-reg with 47 miles on it and almost 5K off list.
It only has the 120ps 2litre Skyactive engine, but it feels like a lot more than 120 because the torque curve is so wide. With V-Power it is amazingly flexible, and when the higher revs are used it really can shift. I think it’s one of the best engines I’ve driven on an ordinary, basic, non-sporting family “balloon” (as my daughters used to say).
So far, 43mpg lifetime according to car and spreadsheet, but steadily getting better!
It is still on the original 12V battery, and the basic iStop works correctly.
Very comfortable seats for both of us, and they don’t interfere with elbows on smaller people.
It has the 60% profile tyre so the rims are much less likely to be kerbed, and the ride is excellent with the Continentals it has on now.
The Toyo Nano-energy rubber fitted from new was pants, very noisy, and much less grippy than the Contis. Spreadsheet suggests Toyos were noticeably less economical too.
TPMS is from the ABS sensors, and not those expensive valves.
It has a proper handbrake not the stupid electric thing, although it sometimes “helps” with the “hill start assist” by a brake being held on a few seconds by the TCS.
The 2017 facelift immediately following it often had the electric parking brake, and I would have walked away from one of those; simply because every recent European and UK hire car I’ve driven with an epb (maybe a dozen now) had inconsistent troubles with it.
It has gained a few mods I regarded as essential.
- Full professional underseal and cavity injection the day after I picked it up “new.”
- And I added a decent waterproof fitted Boot tray.
- I installed a Reversing camera using the Mazda screen a few weeks later, fiddly, but necessary because rear visibility should be better.
- After another month I added major Soundproofing to reduce the intrusive tyre and road noise, which was unbelievably loud after the silence of our old Vextra. Now we can enjoy the surprisingly good hi-fi from a plugged-in USB stick.
- And I upgraded rear fog and reversing lights with more effective LED bulbs, otherwise all lamps are standard, and do the job well.
- Gave it a dedicated Garmin Nuvi Sat-nav (free lifetime maps and traffic news, works everywhere, no phone needed, one-off buy was cheaper than a Mazda Navi-update) as a vast improvement on the expensive, counter-intuitive, illegible, inaccurate Mazda pain.
- Repaired the OEM driver’s mat with a rubber sheet heel-pad after SWMBO’s left heel ate a hole below the clutch pedal, and none of the replacement offerings protect the specific area that wears.
- After a couple of years I fitted hard wired front and rear Nextbase 522 Dash-cams.