I waited to post this because I wanted things to have a chance to settle. I also had to get a feel for my new ride on the windy roads of New Hampshire, a 2007 MazdaSpeed3 in Black Mica.
I bought the ‘Speed3 on the 5th of November. My first new car, or should I say, the newest car I’ve ever bought. Out the door from Ira Toyota in Manchester for $15k with 25k miles. The best deal for such a car within 250 miles.
Pros
Turbo, performance and handling is excellent.
Great seats.
Aux-in for an MP3 player.
Familiar feel, being Japanese and FWD.
Slick looks, hatches rule!
Practical.
Good on gas despite using premium fuel (near 30MPG if I stay off the go-pedal)
Cons
Interior ergonomics, featuring wasted real estate and cheap-feel controls and knobs.
See “Stupid HVAC controls” below regarding the fan and temperature knobs.
Stupid HVAC controls.
There are a couple of very narrow knobs, one for fan speed and the other for temperature. Right off the bat, I’m not a fan of actual temperature readouts in cars. Give me a blue-to-red gradient and call it a day. Regardless, the knobs are difficult to grip. You can’t turn off the fan and just use the defrost vent to bring in fresh air from the outside. You also can’t disable the A/C being on (via an “econ” mode or something similar) when using the defrost vents. So either the air is coming through the dash or floor vents when the fan is off. When you switch to defrost mode, the fan speed kicks up to the maximum. Put it all together and it’s an annoying system to use.
Annoying gauge dimmer behavior.
Like most cars, there is a little rheostat that lets me dim or brighten the illumination of the instrumentation. There is also a button that “maxes out” the illumination in that it sets the brightness at the highest level whether the headlights are on or off. This is great for cloudy, dark days or at dusk because it lets me have my parking lights or full headlights on and still be able to see the gauges. The problem is at night, when it’s too bright. I’m constantly finding myself adjusting the setting depending on the time of day or weather.
No factory boost gauge (and plenty of room in the cluster for that and more!)
