Drove the Mazdaspeed3 today. I also drove it last Monday and Tuesday. I've noticed I've been driving it more than the Mazda 3 Turbo. It's not that it's a better car than the newer Mazda 3; the Mazda 3 is a better daily driver. It's simply because I don't want to rack up miles on the newer car, especially when the Speed3 is still perfectly capable of daily driving duties.

The Speed3 might already have 145K miles on it, but it still drives well, still looks good (from afar LOL) and can still haul ass when I need it to.

The Mazda 3 on the other hand just crested 16K miles and I'm cringing already. I want it to gain miles slower than the current rate it is gaining miles at. I'm trying to save it for longer drives like road trips, and for drives where I know I will be stuck in stop and go traffic. It doesn't help that the wife tries to drive it every chance she can get. She is literally addicted to driving this car because of how good it drives, the swell of low-end torque and the ease at which it can pass other cars on the highway. Oh and did I mention, there's no wheel spin when I floor it from a stop. Not even in this colder and sometimes rainy weather.

I understand that to some, this might seem like a luxury. Every morning I get to pick which car I want to drive to work in. In a sense, it is a luxury to have that option. On the other hand, none of the two cars I have are “luxury” cars. One is an old beater that happens to be a hot-hatch from a bygone era. — (Now that's a blog post for another day, making your own beater car.) — The other, is just a Mazda 3 with a turbo engine, though the interior is really quite... I'm not gonna say luxurious, but I will say... premium.

Regardless if its a luxury or not, I can tell you how I achieved such a feat. I pay off my cars and keep driving them, instead of trading them in for a new one right after paying it off. You save so much money by not having a monthly car payment. And if you save enough of that money, you can then buy another car in the future, and still keep your old car as backup.

#Journal #Cars #Mazda #Mazdaspeed3 #Mazda3Turbo #PersonalFinance

#Cars #Lexus #IS500 #CarExhaust

I understand that a good number of people didn't like being forced to use the commander knob all the time. In my opinion, there was an easy solution to that issue; simply enable touch screen on their infotainment screen. Let the people who don't want to use the commander knob, touch the screen to do what they want. Instead, they took the route of removing all these useful physical buttons and moved them into this huge laptop sized screen. Well guess what, without the commander knob, it is so much harder to use the infotainment screen without taking your eyes off the road. For a brand that prioritizes the driving experience, this is an idiotic decision.

The move to flat haptic feedback buttons on the steering wheel is another idiotic move. Have they not seen the complaints car reviewers have on the Tiguan and Golf GTI? Most reviews pointed these out as a flaw, a zonk if you will. I have had experience driving a VW Tiguan on a road trip and I wasn't fan of these haptic feedback steering wheel buttons. Also that Tiguan did not have physical buttons for the AC and I hated that as well.

If you're looking to buy a CX-5, especially one with the Turbo, then you need to buy a 2025 model now. The new ones will not come with a Turbo either. Another face palm moment here by the way.

If it was my money, I'm not replacing our 2016 Mazda CX-5 with a 2026 Mazda CX-5. I'll either get the previous model years with the Turbo, or I'm moving up to real luxury brand and find myself a BMW X3 or Audi Q5, reliability be damned.

If this is the new direction they are going, they will lose a lot of their hardcore fans, like me.

#Cars #Mazda

#Cars #Trucks

A couple of thoughts on some cars on this video:

• The Mini Cooper S even with only 201 horsepower, is pretty quick! It even beat the ...... in the drag race.
• That Toyota GR86 is actually quick. Can't sleep on those anymore.
• Man, that Hyundai Elantra N is so quick for a FWD car. A 4.9 sec 0-60, for a FWD car under 35K is crazy. I'm not sure what's stopping Hyundai from giving it an AWD system, but if they did, they would have a giant killer on their hands.
  
• That Ecoboost Mustang is super quick. I know the diehards will say get the V8 or don't get a Mustang at all. But that Ecoboost Mustang might be the best bang for the buck option if your budget is limited. I will certainly not fault anyone for getting it.
• The Mazda3 comes dead last and looks slow in this drag race video. And I will tell you, it does feels slow when you drive it. But if you actually look at your speedometer in daily driving, you'll notice you're consistently driving faster than you thought you were. I don't know what Mazda did, but it's deceptively fast. And while again it was the slowest car here, you'll note that during the launch, it was the smoothest of all the cars. And that's exactly why I picked it. If I wanted wheel spin during acceleration, I can get that all day in my Mazdaspeed3. I wanted a car that will launch with the minimum amount of wheel spin, and the Mazda 3 Turbo is that car.

#Cars #Mazda #Mazda3 #MiniCooperS #Toyota #GR86 #Hyundai #ElantraN #Ford #Mustang

So the size of the muffler doesn't affect airflow as long as it is a true straight pipe design. As soon as you introduce some bends into the flow, like on mufflers with offset inlet/outlet designs, you lose a bit of airflow compared to a straight pipe design.

Another interesting bit of info is that chambered resonators, which introduce obstacles for the air to flow around, flow less air than a straight through design.

Okay, I see where Magnaflow is poking at Flowmaster here, because Flowmaster typically uses chambered resonators. But again this doubles as a marketing video for Magnaflow, so take that with a grain of salt. For all we know, Flowmaster has figured out a way to make the air flow just as well using chambered resonator designs. But my basic knowledge in physics bear out the idea that, a straight through/pipe design will flow more air than one where the air has to go around obstacles.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, typically, OEMs will use chambered resonator designs. Great for reduction in exhaust volume, but not so much for performance. If you're driving a car with a turbocharged engine, you want straight through mufflers to get the best performance out of your turbo.

Knowing that, I now see why some aftermarket exhaust systems flow better and sound louder than other designs. It's all in the design of the mufflers, as well as how much bends there are in the exhaust system as a whole.

#Cars #CarExhaust #Magnaflow

And I think this is the one. It has that deep bassy sound like from the Magnaflow exhaust, but this sounds deeper. Maybe that's due to the 80mm downpipe? It doesn't seem to be as loud as the Corksport and Borla, at least not as attention seeking.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a custom built exhaust. At least you can glean some useful info from the video though. It is using 3 inch piping, with a split design like the Corksport/MBRP exhaust. Sound is managed via two Cortek mufflers (a brand I've never heard of before). You can probably substitute those mufflers for comparable bottle resonators from Vibrant, but I mean the Cortek mufflers in this video sound so good, why not just use them.

#Cars #Mazda #Mazda3Turbo #CarExhaust

Disclaimer, I don't drive my car on the track. I drive on regular roads just like most of the general population. So this opinion really only applies to driving on regular roads.

While I don't consider my Mazdaspeed3 a “fast” car, nor is it on the same level as a BMW M2, I can assure you it is fast enough to have you lose your license. When driving cars like these fast with the intent of having fun, what you're really doing is risking your license to have fun. And it's always never enough.

The roads are never long enough. The roads are never open enough. The speed limits are never high enough.

We don't need faster cars. We need slower cars that are more fun to drive in regular daily driving. Something like an MX-5 or a BRZ/GR86, or a Civic SI or a Mazda3.

#Cars #MickDrivesCars

#Cars #Toyota

I was planning to lift up my car using the same setup: ramps on the front, then jack up the rear to rest the tires on wheel cribs. On a FWD car, this probably would have been fine if you put the transmission in gear before jacking up the car. On a RWD car, both the drive wheels and parking brake is set on the rear wheels, so there was nothing to stop the front wheels from rolling back.

Credit goes to the uploader for being man enough to share his mistake. His upload might just save somebody's life and their car.

#Cars #RaceRamps #CarMaintenance