2020 Mazda3 is beautiful inside and out

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/09/2019 (2507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s be honest here, the vast majority of folks who buy the new Mazda3 likely won’t even notice Mazda has abandoned its independent multi-link rear suspension for a torsion beam rear axle setup.

The truth is, with the exception of car nerds like my colleague Kelly Taylor, and that brainy gearhead kid on your street who refers to your Toyota Camry as an XV50, most people don’t take the time to educate themselves on the finer points of automotive engineering.

Most vehicle shoppers typically overlook the mechanical details — focusing instead on important stuff like the quality of the infotainment system, the number of cupholders and USB charging ports and, of course, how a vehicle looks.

Case in point: a few years back, one of my friends bought a beautiful new Cadillac CTS and didn’t realize it was rear-wheel drive until he couldn’t get out of his driveway one snowy morning.

Purchasing winter tires solved his traction issues — but it was amusing to me that a grown man had bought a car simply because he thought it looked cool, without making the realization it would handle monumentally differently than the front-wheel drive Chevrolet Impala he traded off. In fairness, he retired early and now winters in Florida, so he surely knows a lot of stuff that escapes me.

Perhaps this scenario outlines why we automobile journalists even exist. We aren’t here to shame you with our Yoda-like, (or in my case Shrek-like) knowledge of all things automotive, we are here to help make sure you’re not getting duped into buying a shiny new car that you can’t back out of your driveway in ankle-deep snow.

To this end, it appears Taylor has done his due diligence with the new Mazda3 — he has driven both the sedan and the hatchback on terrain ranging from the silky-smooth roads of California to the mean streets of Elmwood.

Through it all, he has determined there really is no reason to be worried about this fairly significant change in the Mazda3’s rear suspension.

Taylor is a stickler for the details, so there’s no way he would ever make such a claim unless it is entirely true.

To further reinforce his findings, I took that little Mazda3 sedan to an abandoned road on the edge of town and drove it with my angry face on. It was hammered hard down washboard-covered gravel roads, it was drifted into sweeping corners where my foot was pulled off the gas pedal in mid-corner — just to see how the little car would react.

The brake pedal was slammed, then lifted and slammed again, just to see if things went awry in the same manner they most surely would have in a 1986 Hyundai Pony.

Long story short, the new Mazda3 was properly flogged, torsion beam suspension and all.

It is gruelling work, but someone has to do it.

The results of my findings mirrored Taylor’s. What we have here is a perfect little car that is abundantly fun to drive and is an absolute improvement over the previous model in every way, including the rear suspension.

Sure, Mazda may have saved a few bucks with the new torsion beam suspension, and those bushings may be integral to the success of this bold move — but as previously stated, most of you will probably never notice.

What you will notice, especially in the sedan version, is a sweet little car that makes me think of a baby BMW 3 Series.

It handles like a champ, has decent power and is amazingly quiet.

It also has a terrific infotainment system, and as an added bonus, it looks great.

The fact it is available with all-wheel drive will also help some of you avoid answering those embarrasing questions about which wheels provide traction.

 

willy@freepress.mb.ca