Category: Small Family 
Price Range: £11,950 to £19,900
Fun to drive, refined 2.2 diesel, low emissions, good interior.
Some concerns over ride quality, poor steering feel, lack of space in rear.
The Mazda 3 leaps from offbeat alternative to near class best. Deserves serious consideration.
Mazda performs well when it comes to reliability and owner satisfaction. The brand ranked ninth in the most recent 2008 JD Power customer satisfaction survey. The Mazda 3 was placed a reasonable 27th (out of 100), with owners reporting above average reliability. To put this in perspective its distant cousin, the Ford Focus, trails in a less impressive 51st.
To ensure the new car is even more reliable, the Mazda 3 has undergone an incredible 1.2 million kilometres of durability testing, more than any other Mazda model: it's been tested in some of the world's harshest and most hostile environments including Iceland and Sweden.
The new 3 has also upped its game considerably when it comes to interior quality with pleasant soft-touch plastics covering the dash that feels both expensive and tactile. It's not just better use of more expensive materials; the whole interior feels well built too. It's not perfect, you can find the odd piece of low-grade trim or cheap-feeling plastic like that on the glovebox lid, but overall we think it's the firm's most cohesive and best interior yet.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mazda Mazda3
wrote on 16 12 2006