I get to drive and review a lot of cars in this job. When people figure out what I do, they often comment that it must make knowing what I’d like to buy and drive myself easier — since my job is essentially comparison shopping.
After all, if I get to drive a new car for a few days almost every week, I have a wide cross section of road experiences to choose from out there. I must be able to sort through the cars I like and the vehicles I could do without en route to knowing what I myself would/will buy when the time comes to shop.
The problem is that cars are becoming very similar to each other. It’s a positive “sameness,” but it’s still melting into a soup of familiarity — unless we’re talking high performance vehicles that price themselves out of the common buyers price range. Sure, I’d have no problem picking what Jaguar F-Type or Lexus LFA to own. Those cars are outside my journalist income limitations.
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That makes the job a little more difficult. As engineering technology and shared designing/manufacturing techniques become more standard, so do the cars. Simply, as cars all get better, they become harder to distinguish.
That’s an admittedly long winded way to explain, when I do find a car I’d buy and can afford, it’s a big deal for me. The 2014 Mazda 3 S Five Door Grand Touring is a car I would buy and drive every day happily — without worrying about whether I’m writing enough articles to get the machine paid for every month.
That reaction is not an overwhelming surprise since the 2014 Mazda 3 stood alongside its sister Mazda 6 atop countless Car of the Year lists. Mazda made it to the final two for Car of the Year at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this year, as well as the New York International Auto Show. In both cases, Mazda lost out to much more expensive vehicles — proving that (for the money) the Japanese automaker made the best cars of the year.
So, this hatchback version of the award-winning Mazda 3 is the fully kitted out edition — adding a pile of features to an already outstanding rides. The serves up the complete possible suite of technology and features. You get a speedometer HUD, satellite navigation, steering directed headlights, lane departure warning system, Bluetooth connectivity and AM/FX/XM stereo.
More important than those flashes and whistles is what’s under the hood. The Mazda 3 GT uses a 2.5-liter inline four cylinder engine linked to a six-speed, sport shift automatic transmission — producing 184 horsepower. That’s ample power for sporty five door — making it an aggressive drive without angry exhaust to give the game away.
What makes the 2014 Mazda 3 a classic, award-winning vehicle is the driving experience. Thanks to the company’s Kodo, “Soul of Motion” design philosophy, what could have been an average hatchback is quick, balanced, aggressive, eager, tight and responsive. All with a highway MPG of 38 and a price tag under $30,000.
Mazda wants every car they make to drive like a sports car, even if that’s not the role the car is designed to fill. They succeeded so well with this 2014 model, they built a car I’d own tomorrow.
