New ad agency for Mazda?

[MBennett]

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100308/AUTO01/3080413/1361/Mazda-shops-around-for-new-advertising-agency

Well, I don't love the ads, but I positively LOATHE the new "corporate face" ...

 

[Jim Boemler]

Of the three, I'd vote for the top one. 

jim

[wreckerboy]

+1 for option one.

The "styling" of the new 3 is beyond Chris Bangle levels of ugly. We were just in the market for a new car and the 2010 Mazda 3 was on the list until we realized that the only time we could approach it was at night when it was too dark to be able to see how fugly the thing is.

Then we found a screaming deal on a 2007 Speed 3 with only 9,200 miles on it (one owner, I've known the car since new). It's no "10", but the mileage and the price allowed us to see it's inner beauty. And the boost is addictive...

[Dusty Bottoms]

+1 for option one.

The "styling" of the new 3 is beyond Chris Bangle levels of ugly. We were just in the market for a new car and the 2010 Mazda 3 was on the list until we realized that the only time we could approach it was at night when it was too dark to be able to see how fugly the thing is.

Then we found a screaming deal on a 2007 Speed 3 with only 9,200 miles on it (one owner, I've known the car since new). It's no "10", but the mileage and the price allowed us to see it's inner beauty. And the boost is addictive...

Welcome to the MS3 club.  It is awesome huh?  Make sure the recalls have been taken care of.  The engine mount and the computer reflash.

[wreckerboy]

Already taken care of, but thanks for the heads up. One of the recalls got taken care of before the car got two blocks from the dealer when it was new - the car lit the CEL and went right back. The other got done at the same time as the motor mount and according to the previous owner smoothed out the idle at the same time.

The only question now is how big will the speeding ticket be... this thing is truly stoopid fast.

[Dusty Bottoms]

That's why I got the Cosmic Blue and not the arrest-me red.   

[Weekend Warrior]

The only question now is how big will the speeding ticket be... this thing is truly stoopid fast.

Word to the wise:

[Greg Bush]

We put 50,000 miles on ours without a ticket, and no detector.

It is stupid fast, but there should be some smarts in the car....

We had one of the first in the country (off the first boatload into the US).

The only real reason we got rid of it is it was too loud to hear my 2 year old, and he spent about 80 miles per day in it. We even changed tires hoping to quiet it down, but its like they forgot to insulate it or something.

That and we didn't have a good feeling about having the car after the warranty expired.

Be careful about opening both doors on a side at the same time, the door strips will hit each other and peel off if you time it just right. But then its just time to shave them from the car and do a little buffing.

I still have 2 oil filters if you want them.

To tell how loud it is, we replaced it with a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon with factory mud tires, and it is way quieter.

[Zauskycop]

We have an MS6...advantage is the AWD can make you go stupid fast in the WINTER too!!   Actually, it is my wife's car, though I give her credit for wearing out a set of tires in a year and a half....   That's my girl!!  haha.   
We LOVE the Speed6...great car and I have no idea why they stopped making it...

[wreckerboy]

Ours is silver. The red is pretty, but definitely in the "lock me up" end of the color spectrum.

Alan:
Already have the Escort 8500 - purchased when they first came out four or five years ago and I was commuting 130 miles/day. It's already been serviced twice by Cincinnati Micro for falsing laser alerts. The fool thing is doing it again now whenever I blow the horn in the van or accelerate hard in the MS3. Seeing as the 3 spends a lot time accelerating hard, it's probably time to upgrade to the V-1.

Greg:
Thanks for the filter offer. I bought a dozen from Rosenthal (they had a special) right after we got the car. What a PIA to change the oil on this thing - undo the belly pan, drain the filter, remove the filter, then realize why only a few drops of oil came out, drain the sump, reassemble, wash, rinse, repeat. I also bought the FSM for it as well. All that money and it just arrives as a stack of paper, no binders, no nuttin. Damn.

I share your concerns about the long term viability of the car. Normally we keep cars until there isn't enough left to bury. The race car was my daily for years and the chassis has 250K on it now, the Corolla the MS3 replaced has 235 on it, and my old Nissan truck went 450K+ from new before it rotted away from under me. I suspect that we'll keep this thing to 75K max, and possibly even less. Unless the traffic court orders me to sell it in exchange for not going to jail!

[Weekend Warrior]

I'm sure its paid for itself many times over, mine has. I only get the laser when I pass the airport on a certain road at certain spot....or someone is laying a dot on me....

[Jim Boemler]

Why is everybody so afraid to keep the car?  I haven't been hearing of failures, and Mazda has a pretty good rep.  What gives (out)?

jim

[Dusty Bottoms]

Why is everybody so afraid to keep the car?  I haven't been hearing of failures, and Mazda has a pretty good rep.  What gives (out)?

jim

I think there are a lot of people modding these things (Cobb ECU, intakes, etc.) and popping motors and the motors are EXPENSIVE.  That and turbos have a bad rep but this car has a pretty cool cooling system.

The other concern is 280lbs-ft to the front wheels so you know you'll be needing engine mounts and CVJ's replaced at some point.  All the parts on this car are expensive because a lot are unique to this car.

Finally, maybe the reason some guys are wanting to sell it is because they flog it...it would be like owning an ex-rental car.   

I just can't find something better for what I want.  It seems like nobody comes close to the mpg/hp ratio, not to mention fun factor and reliability.

I would think really hard about something like a Mazda5 with one of these turbo engines, or the new Mazda (2011?) diesel engine.  I have also thought about a Honda Element but I don't like the suicide doors, and the mpg/hp ratio is horrible in it.

I normally change the oil on my cars but for this car, once I used up my filters I now take it to the dealer.  It's too much of a pain to change, and Roger Beasley Mazda here in Austin has a nice lounge with wifi, free coffee, popcorn, TV, etc.  I can work from there while they work on my car so it's not an inconvenience at all for me.

Regarding radar detectors, the only one I would ever consider buying would be a Valentine.  I don't use a radar detector and the last time I had a ticket was 1987...and that happened to be the last time I had a radar detector too.

Greg, I went with A/S tires instead of summer only once the RE050's wore out.  ContiExtremeContact and my car is much quieter.  I also had it aligned because when I changed tires it was scary to drive.  The new tires made it super-sensitive to thrust but boy did it turn AWESOME to the left!!!

[MBennett]

Antonio knows this, but I briefly owned an 2008.5 Speed3 GT that I "stole" from the original owner during the financial meltdown.  The thing was showroom condition except for some tire wear, and only about 6 months old from being bought new ... I got it for $18.5K.   

I liked it, I respected it, but I didn't like it 4.5 times more than my $4K '92 Miata, so I sold it after about 9 months or so.

I also got my only ticket in a few years in the damn thing ... easiest car to speed in I ever owned, and that includes a Supra Twin Turbo. 

[Jim Boemler]

That "easy to speed" thing can be a killer.  When I first got my supercharged R32, I had to drive it 1100 miles home, through mountain passes on snow.  I found myself cruising at 110+ without even realizing it, because even in 6th it would just want to keep going.  The 4wd is a huge benefit, though; if there was one reason I wouldn't buy the Speed3 it's because it's only 2-wheel drive.

jim

[wreckerboy]

If I can manage some sort of restraint, the "it's too easy to go the speed of plaid" thing isn't that big an issue. Restrain is coming in the form of $2.89/gallon premium around here. Right now we're averaging about 24 MPG in mixed driving.

We bought this car because it was the right car at the right price at the right time (owned by a friend, low miles, clean, and stinky cheep - $13K). It was certainly not our first choice for a driver, but the deal was sweet. Oh yeah, and it does go to plaid. 

For our daily driver application it means that we drive high miles, need high reliability, and want low operating costs. The old Toyota was affectionately referred to as "duh" because it was simple to own, and cheap to keep. We started out looking at Corollas and base 3's for comparison. The new Corolla is not as good a car in terms of fit, finish, and driveability for us, and we're Toyota fans. The base 3 is a much better car. 

I haven't heard anything bad about long term reliability with these things either. The reason we may not keep it around is because it is just too damned complex and I don't want to deal with eleventy seven widgets dying $low deaths over the 10 years we tend to keep a daily driver. You turn the car off and you can hear relays and whatnot under the hood clicking for 15 seconds. I bought a copy of the FSM and the level of complexity required for diagnosis is insane. Anyhting beyond a basic oil change looks to require ten inch long fingers with extra knuckles - it's packed tight under there.

Like Mark, we respect it, we like it, but maybe not enough to make a long term commitment.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Rob,

I know what you mean about Toyotas.  My parents had a 94 and a 95 Camry.  Extremely boring cars but holy cow were those things tough as tanks and they got 34mpg...they made you drive nice and relaxed and they could take a beating (after my sister inherited the 95).  I think the 94 was sold at 170k and is still around.  The 95...don't know how many miles but was sold to my sister's neighbor and is still around in Bloomfield, NJ.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this car but I bought it new and I don't want to take the depreciation hit.  I keep my cars 10+ years.  My standard are the old Camrys or my 96 Integra.  I wanted 4 doors and that's the only reason I sold (or gave away for $3500) that car...106k miles and the only electrical problem in that car was a burned out left headlight bulb.  I never even had to replace a taillight.  The radiator tank cracked at 100k miles ($70 radiator replacement), the clutch was done at 100k miles too.  The first brake job was at 70k miles (but tires only lasted me 10-20k miles  ).  The leather seats looked like new.  The only thing worn was the red paint which is expected of a car in TX that spends all day outside while I work.  I averaged 25mpg (real, not like the 24mpg indicated in my MS3...more like 22mpg real but I'm OK with it b/c of the extra 90HP and 170lbs-ft of torque for 2 less mpg )

If you work around and look through the underside of the MS3 you will see it has a lot of lightweight stuff so all that makes for a noisy car.  You start adding body quieting components (braces, thicker plastic, dynamat) and you can easily add 100lbs.   I do hate the super-heavy hood.  I have no idea why it's so heavy but when it got damaged by hail I was VERY tempted to get a CF hood (but paint it stock color).

Ultimately, the car is a joy to drive.  The best FWD handling car I have ever owned period.  Very close in performance to my 96 Integra with Koni sport shocks and coil-overs but 10x more comfortable.

[Weekend Warrior]

Rob, try a diesel truck. Drive forever, handle anything that comes along (including rival drivers that want a 50' gooseneck trailer pulled out of mud and towed to the track) as well as getting 18mpg.

I did clean out the space in front of my radiator the other day and found a Camry and a Miata...(along with a few liberals and an old bird carcass....).

[wreckerboy]

Alan - don't remind me about diesels. The same friend that sold us the MS3 (Bob Hill, one time EMRA Chair) previously had a '03 Jetta TDI that he offered to me about two years ago. Again, a great deal. 30K miles, $10K. The problem was that my commuting needs had just changed - I had gone from 650 miles a week to mass transit and didn't need the car, the Corolla was in fine shape, so we passed on it. I'm still kicking myself over that one.

The bright side is that the only reason we even thought about the MS3 in the first place is because we went to Bob's house to drive his new 2010 Jetta TDI as we were considering one of those this last time around. He mentioned that the rocketship MS was just sitting around and here we are. However, given his car ADD, I'm thinking we just have to be patient and wait on the current Jetta he has.

Then again, we gave the duh! car to my step-daughter and SIL with a right of first refusal clause, so we can always get that back...

[Greg Bush]

We put Toyo all seasons on it, the problem is that quietness is subjective, and either you have to get lucky or try a bunch of tires to get quiet. Manufacturers ratings don't quantify noise.

The dealer we bought the car from was great. They even sponsored some races around here and helped Andrew Caddell when he was running MX-5 Cup. But they went away, and were replaced by the typical lousy dealership.

It took 2 tries to convince them we needed the fuel pump recall done, and by then I think the cam was damaged because the noise never went away completely (4th gear 40mph loud tick). It was literally off the first boatload (I had pictures of it sitting in the yard at the docks 12 miles from here weeks before it was delivered) and they didn't think it was early enough in production....

My wife got 28 MPG on her commute, I got about 24 when I drove it. The first set of tires made it 30K, and had more to go so we weren't too hard on it.

All the lightweight stuff underneath are aero aids.

The car is something like 3400 pounds, and most of that is in the hood. I heard that the monster hood is either for euro pedestrian standards or our crash standards.

The JDM version (Axela) is 4wd, but they didn't bring it over here. The weight made it slower than a regular WRX, and the speed target was at or just below the STI. They didn't think the 4wd version would sell, and that was backed up by the slow selling MS6. Those sold so slow, some were rebranded as the next model year....

On the plus side, the TC and stabilty control were top notch. The way it limited torque in 1st and 2nd gears based on steering angle was spot on. And when you really got on it it would leave 2 faint black streaks through 1st, 2nd, and sometimes 3rd letting you know you were using all the traction you had.

That car was like a crazy girlfriend. A lot of fun, nice at times, but not a long term prospect.

[Weekend Warrior]

Ahhh Chooooo! Somebody has a virus?