Car talk!

[GMichael]

What a rip off! I was just on the Mazda site running some prices. The interest rate to lease a Mazda 3 Sport is 4.4% for 36 months. The rate to lease a Mazda Speed3 is 5.9% for the same 36 months! I don't understand the different rates. The cost of borrowing for Mazda should be the same regardless of car. It doesn't make sense to me.

Oh, and they're running a promotion so that I could purchase the Mazda Speed3 for zero financing up to 60 months and only 1.9% for longer periods. At those rates I'd consider buying over leasing. 5.9% vs. 0%. I don't get it.

One car is selling out without the lower % rate, so they don't offer it.
They may be overstocked on the other so therefore the better rate.
Good old supply and demand.

[Woochifer]

Kinda joining in a bit late, but as far as the Mazdas go, my wife and I liked them enough to buy one. In advance of our baby's arrival, we bought a Mazda5 (we never considered leasing because both of us tend to keep our cars for a long time and we clock a lot of long distance driving).

The 5 is basically a Mazda3 with a taller minivan-style body. Among the cars we looked at, this was the perfect size configuration, and it offers quite a bit for a relatively low price. It's definitely a lot more sluggish than the 3, but it's more agile than a typical minivan or SUV and probably has the easiest step-in for a car I've ever tried (important consideration for when grandparents visit). We got one fully loaded with a leather interior, auto climate control, sunroof, Xenon headlights, upgraded audio, etc. for $22k out the door.




Overseas, these types of cars are known as space wagons, tall wagons, or MPVs. Very efficiently packaged with 3 rows of seats and an overall length generally shorter than a midsized sedan, without the excessive bulk, height, and weight of SUVs. As popular as this class of car has become overseas, they've never caught on in the U.S. The Kia Rondo is the only other car of this type being sold in North America. Perhaps with high gas prices and a sluggish economy, there's more of a market opening for these kinds of cars in the near future. Honda is purportedly planning to test the waters by bringing its hot selling MPV, the Stream, to North America in 2009. This also would have been ideal for what we were looking for, had it been available.



Car shopping did get frustrating at times, because we were looking for something that could accommodate a baby along with a dog tethered in the cargo area, yet we did not want a SUV for a variety of reasons. We would have considered going with a wagon if there had been more workable options in our price range. The so-called minivans were also a disappointment because the newer ones have gotten beyond huge, and the prices have also gone through the roof. The Mazda5 is actually about the same size as the original Dodge Caravan and the original Honda Odyssey, yet it's nearly 2 feet shorter and over 1,000 lbs. lighter than the current versions of those minivan models.

Personally, I liked how the Mazda3 drove, but my wife deemed the cargo area too small. The Chevy HHR was close to the size we needed, but my years of experience with GM rental cars soured me on Chevys. The VW Passat wagon also met our needs, but we thought that the Mazda5 was an all-around better value, so we went with that.

Among the Mazdas I've driven over the years, I always found that Mazdas are designed to reward drivers who like driving. They might not be the fastest cars off the line, but in a turn they are very rewarding. At the same time though, they do demand more attention from the driver because they are responsive and can get a bit twitchy at the extremes.

In contrast, Toyotas are as bland as they come, but that's by design. They're forgiving to a fault in a turn, smooth, efficient, reliable, practical, etc. A friend of mine who worked as an auto engineer told me that Toyota has the resources to be a world beater in almost all performance categories if they wanted to. But, instead they overengineer their cars for reliability, while finding the middle points for performance, and paying an inordinate amount of attention to how the ergonomic pieces fit together. Obviously, it has worked fine for them, even if auto enthusiasts find their cars staid and boring.

Hondas seem to be somewhere in the middle -- a bit more edginess dialed into the driving experience, but still forgiving enough for average drivers who'd rather pay attention to their various distractions than the road.

I've yet to drive a Ford Fusion (driven enough rental Tauruses to know I would never want to own one), but it seems like a step in the right direction that it shares a platform with the Mazda6, while the new Focus shares its platform with the 3. My last rental was a Mustang (albeit w/ the base V-6), and while it had its fun moments, it felt like a heavy car and not especially agile or responsive. I will say though that Ford dialed one of the sweetest sounding exhaust notes into that car! Lots of bark, but without the V-8, not a whole lot of bite.