After 3 years of driving the Mazda 3 2.0i Challenge I can whole heartily say this car is absolutely brilliant. A pleasure to drive or road trip with. You lover her more and more each day.
I put together this list of things I love and hate most about it:
Top 5 dislikes:
- it lacks app-connect, so the huge display becomes pretty useless if you don't have navigation, you still need to try work your way using a mobile phone
- passenger seat sensor. As soon as you place something as light as 0.5 kg on it, the belt sensor starts beeping and you find yourself trying to rearrange stuff on that chair while driving
- the blue indicator showing the engine is still warming up. It's misleading, I still have the feeling the high beam is on
- Smart City Brake Support - cannot be deactivated by default. First time it went on I literally thought I hit something, it is very brutal and forces you to hit the brakes when something slows down in front of you
- computer board shows 0 km left, but when you fill the tank, you soon realize there were 10l available. Very frustrating when it happens on a highway and your conscious makes you turn back to the nearest station, thinking you cannot make it any further
Top 5 likes - difficult to pick, but here they are:
- great design and very comfortable
- very easy to drive and very responsive. It has precise handling and it is very stable when speeding up
- the engine is amazing and I suspect it has more than the 120 HP declared on paper
- the brakes are fantastic, very responsive, hard, easy to control
- halogen lamps - however, other packages offer full LED
Last, but not least, there is no better option for the price. Competition sells similar capabilities for worse design and 5000-10000 EUR extra.
Questions? Do not hesitate to ask.