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

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

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

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

#Cars #Mazda #MazdaCX50

#Cars #Mazda #RX8 #GearAndGasoline

One thing I realized after watching all the engineering interviews, is that the reason why Mazda cannot grow their market share, is because they are not willing to compromise their driving philosophy and principles for the general population. They want to build cars that drive like a Mazda. If you don't like how their cars drive, then so be it. And that insistence on sticking with their way of building and tuning cars, is what keeps Mazda fans like me coming back for more. On the flip side, this is also what stops most of the general public from buying a Mazda.

Lastly, the powertrain and transmission issues mentioned in this video are not new to me. I've seen it mentioned in other reviews. My opinion is that you should probably skip the first and second year models until they sort out all of those issues. This after all is all new for Mazda; brand new inline six engine, brand new 8-speed transmission and brand new rear-wheel drive based architecture. They just need more time to sort out all of those issues. This is a car that will get better and better as the years go by. If I'm shopping for a 3-row SUV, this is still at the top of my list.

#Mazda #CX90 #savagegeese #Cars

#Mazda #CX90 ##Cars #RaitisRides

Excellent review of the Mazda 3 Turbo hatchback. That drive through the canyons looked like a lot of fun. This guy put the car through its paces unlike so many other reviews on YouTube.

#Cars #Mazda #Mazda3

#Cars #Mazda #CX90