Gadgetory

Mazda is so proud of their little three they put their name on it twice but I found a few things inside that no car makers should be real proud of let's drive the 2012 Mazda 3 Grand Touring five-door and check the tech now I applaud Mazda for putting an average in this car at all but I don't applaud them for what they put in the car once they did that that thing up there no it's not a postage stamp that's a navigation unit they call it appropriately compact navigation thanks for the help on that one your interface is almost nil it's not a touchscreen obviously you get a broom handle to get there anyway voice command doesn't operate the thing that's just for Bluetooth hands-free calling instead use this little rocker you go up and down you push on it you go left and right and that's how you enter an address it looks like this you set your destination press again to do that press again for address now to enter a city name here's where the fun begins what the hell is that I got a chase around this sort of square Z looking thing to find my letters and numbers oh and this thing all blanks out when the car is on the move so you can't even do this if you even wanted to when the car is moving but without voice come in I'll be pulling over to do that no actually I'll be pulling over to do this and that's the kind of compact navigation I want on a Mazda 3 now onto the entertainment system on this trim level we've got a Bose audio system 256 watts 10 speakers a powered sub center point to move the soundstage around all decent sounding stuff sources are pretty good AM and FM but no HD and therefore no itunes tagging you've got a CD slot right here no DVD because where would you watch it on that thing satellite radio 4 months are included aux gets you to two things you can go to the aux jack for analog input or bluetooth streaming audio do you see anything missing right no iPod or iPod USB jack that's crazy now on this trim level which is kind of the middle of the three five-door based levels you have a six-speed Automatic only as part of the SKYACTIV powertrain if you go higher or lower you end up getting the choice of a 6-speed manual but not on this guy now let's go see what feeds it now the engine in this Mazda 3 is the SKYACTIV engine a 2 liter inline 4 there's also a non sky active engine in the mix as well but this is the interesting motor but it's complicated sky active isn't one or two technologies it's a whole bunch of technologies in one place starting off with high compression most cars are maybe a 10 to 1 compression ratio this is a 13 to one says Mazda and that gets you up to like 180 plus psi per cylinder the point is you get a lot more the energy captured from each dose of fuel most cars only get about 30% of the energy out of a sip of gas this one does about 15% better hemispherical combustion chambers so yes it's a Hemi but no don't go drag racing any dodge challengers and it's got headers which is kind of a hot rod trick four into two into one all that to keep those high compression cylinders from backing exhaust into each other all in they say this has 15% better power and 15% better mpg the numbers 155 horsepower 148 foot-pounds of torque gets this slightly sub 3,000 pound car to 60 in about nine half not exciting but again it's all about efficiency here and that's where this guy kind of rocks 28 40 mpg with the automatic you shave 1 mpg on the highway if you get the manual that's the price of fun and finally Mazda took out 30% of the friction and drag in the engine again not really sexy stuff but it's important under way this guy is underwhelming not in a bad way not in a fatal way but this is a car that is as more or less gutless as it seems on paper there's an efficiency thing going on here not a power thing and that's fine if this had a turbocharger on top of all of us other technologies that expect green with mean but it's mostly just green as you may have noticed we've got a slapstick shiftable gate on this transmission pretty garden-variety stuff no paddles and that makes sense the ride is not overly firm but the car makes it seem that way because there are a few clicks and rattles here and there I'm hearing from the back it's just this side of civilized I don't like the engine note either it's got a real 4-cylinder sound to it which a lot of fours don't have anymore but this one does in all this is typically mazda at least on their lower end cars it's a very visceral car which doesn't mean it's overpowering but you get the feeling that you can hear and feel every system at work not my favorite idea when those systems don't sound or feel real good but again it's not a bad car it's just not one that pleases me on a sensory front but here's what you should take note of look at that display right there that's across 235 miles of mixed driving there's a real world average calculated out to almost 26 mpg that's real economy alright this 2012 mazda3 5-door in the Grand Touring trim more or less top of the stack is about 23 5 delivered I would spend the 1400 for the tech package that odd basket of kind of unrelated stuff but they're all pretty good and a good value at 1400 unfortunately you can't pry the nav out it's part of this trim level although with a crowbar you could and I think I would do that