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2019 Mazda3 Sedan Drivers' Notes Review | Moving on up

The Mazda3 enters its fourth iteration for 2019, replacing one of our favorite compacts on the market. As such, expectations were high for the new model. Like before, the Mazda3 is available as both a sedan and hatchback, though the big news for the new model is the available all-wheel drive system, a rarity for the class and and a feature more and more people are looking for in a car these days. At launch, power comes solely from a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated inline-four, though Mazda plans to offer additional powertrains down the line. Competitors include the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Subaru Impreza, Hyundai Elantra and Kia Forte. Our tester was a well-equipped Mazda3 Premium front-wheel-drive sedan. Standard features include 18-inch wheels, LED lighting, a power driver's seat, leather seating and trim, keyless entry and ignition, dual-zone climate control, an 8.8-inch infotainment system, Bose audio, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert and adaptive cruise control. The only added cost to the Premium Package is $595 for the paint. All in, our tester came out to $27,990. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore: The Mazda3 is the sportiest in the segment and, as far as I'm concerned, it's dead-even with the Honda Civic for the top spot in the looks department. The steering, brakes and suspension all feel dialed-in and quick. Many compacts are sedate. The 3 makes you want to track it. The suspension is stiff enough that non-enthusiasts might prefer something else, though it's not abusive. The naturally aspirated four provides just enough getup. Mazda is good at the minimalistic approach. Tune a car well, make it look sporty, and don't try to overcompensate with horsepower. This thing looks great inside and out. For the price, you can't beat it. The cabin has the appearance and feel of a premium sedan, with pleasing materials and an enveloping cockpit. With a creased hood and huge, blacked-out grille, the 3's front end has a contemporary style with old-school panache. I might like the hatch better because it's a rarer body style. Still, this sedan is a well-rounded, sporty execution and a great value. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Associate Editor Joel Stocksdale: Since its reveal at the Los Angeles Auto Show, the 2019 Mazda3 has been my most anticipated car of the year, as well as the one I've been most worried about.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Mazda G-Vectoring Control makes driving better without you knowing

Mazda has just spent eight years developing a new technology that will make its new cars a lot more fun to drive, even if you have absolutely no idea that it's working. And subtlety's the point, Mazda engineers told us at a press event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. In fact, the effects of what they've dubbed G-Vectoring Control are so fine that the marketing and PR teams are at a loss for how to do their jobs with it. "The engineers have done their work," said Mazda Director of Communications Jeremy Barnes, "But how do we get the message across?" The basic premise is this: G-Vectoring activates only when the car's on-board computer reads simultaneous steering and throttle input. The data — including throttle position, steering angle, and, crucially, how quickly you're adjusting the steering angle — are then funneled through an algorithm to reduce engine torque, which transfers vehicle weight, adding more grip to the wheels that need it. The system will appear first on 2017 Mazda6 sedans arriving in showrooms later this year, followed by the 2017 Mazda3. Actually, "subtle" does not even begin to describe the effect. G-Vectoring Control can detect as much as one tenth of one degree of steering angle, and changes the cornering forces only 0.1 to 0.5 g as a result. "That's less than the human body can feel," explained Vehicle Development Engineer Dave Coleman. In practice, G-Vectoring reduces the steering angle at turn-in, as well as the rate at which one turns the wheel. To demonstrate, Director of R&D Kelvin Hiraishi rode shotgun with us in a specially equipped Mazda6 that allowed him to turn G-Vectoring on or off at the push of a button (production cars will always have it on). Hiraishi had us drive a number of courses, including Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca itself, while an engineer measured our steering inputs with a laptop Matrix'd into the car's electronic brain. I drove the same course several times with the same car in the same conditions, with cruise control locked and the system turned on or off. Lo and behold, with G-Vectoring activated, the engineer's output graph showed that my steering inputs were indeed reduced ever so slightly. There were two times that G-Vectoring was markedly noticeable. The first on a turn with a minor banking toward the outside, and the second was during cornering over an artificially wet section of the course — in other words, when the car was at the limits of adhesion.