Zen Mazda: 2019 Mazda3 AWD hatchback - Our first new car

"Zen Mazda" - named in our first 3 days of ownership, as my wife "needed" to spend part of the first night with her... in her    Zen is a 2019 Mazda3 AWD with an automatic (the wife has serious left knee issues, while she drove a shift for nearly 35 years, its time for an auto), with the preferred pkg. 

Zen has a little over 1000 miles on her, about 900 under my wife's driving, and about 100 with mine.  I'll be doing more driving in the next week or so as Surreptitious waits for a new ring and pinion.

Auto SHOCK:  The difference between driving Surreptitious (1983 AE71 coupe) verses driving  Zen, our 2019 Mazda3.      

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

New cars are nice. I remember when I drove our crosstrek, it was the first nice new car that’s wasnt a bare bones vehicle. They’ve come a long way since the ‘85 celica. 

_ said:

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

New cars are nice. I remember when I drove our crosstrek, it was the first nice new car that’s wasnt a bare bones vehicle. They’ve come a long way since the ‘85 celica. 

Yeah.  In 2004 the TSX was the nicest car we'd ever owned, by far.  Earlier this year I was still happy driving it - in fact I felt guilty about shopping for a new car, but strategically it was a good time to replace it.  Last night I was driving the TSX to meet someone for a showing, and proved to myself that I'm already spoiled by the new car.

I've seen a few of those 3 hatches in the metal, and they are very very handsome.  It looks fantastic in white, too - really shows off the subtle feature lines.  Toyota should be taking pages of notes here.

Congratulations, OST!

What do you think of the sight lines out of the car over your shoulder?  They seem like great cars and might be on my list in a few years when I get out of my current daily.

Line of sight isn't great, although with mirrors placed well, you can see quite a bit.  My biggest complaint about visibility, is coming to an acute intersection, I'm visually dodging the "D"/door pillar to view oncoming traffic.   Rear facing camera helps a LOT with back up, additionally they have a tilt when in reverse mirror so you can see the tire, and curb when parking! 

Zen is equipped with the boat load of nannys - too many to currently remember, but I'll post them up as they annoy me..... lane departure - disconcerting, but beginning to get use to it.... but it is switched 

Hmmm, still unsure of 10,000 mile oil changes.... may change to "severe" and get it done @ 5,000.   I know, but I'm still use to 3500 miles for oil and filter................

Those are really nice looking cars, especially in white. Mazda3 is really, really, quite a lot of car, wish my parents had held out for this instead of going with CX5 (which they love). 

I think most people's use of their cars qualify for "severe" on the oil change interval.  5k or so seems about right.  

I have only seen a few out in the wild and they look amazing. Love that white!

Agreed on the previous comments; that looks great in white! Congrats!

The cluster....

So Zen has 2400 miles... it does have a slight vibration @ speeds (60+) - we have an appointment to have it checked.  I think I'll get them to do the first oil change too.

If you want to learn more about the 2019 Mazda3, there are many Youtube videos - "2019 Mazda3"

After seeing a few of the videos - my wife and I found some issues moot.  Since we have never had a screen in any car... the actual size works for us... a few reviewers found it small.  We found it not in the way!    The Bose stereo is very nice 

So (nannys....)  the lane alert system is STILL annoying, I tend to drift towards the left line frequently to check forward visibility, the system reacts with noise, and vibrating steering wheel.   Put it in reverse and either mirror can be made to tilt down so you can see the curb when parking.  Also the rear camera shows a wide angle view.  Now the back up warning is a nice feature for the most part...   Additionally the auto wipers is kind of nice... but it seems to need a nudge to start... then the auto feature works well most of the time... but it does occasionally just turn on the wipers when not needed.  It also has the automatic lights feature, nice... but the lights are frequently changing between low, and high beam....  maybe the high beam shouldn't be automatic.

Now a feature I'd like... a forward facing cam.   It would be nice to nudge up close when parking, but not "challenge" the curbs.  I don't see this is that difficult considering the cars lane monitoring must use something....  Btw, the front lower section (below grill) is replaceable separately if it does get hit too often - or so it was said in a youtube video.

more to come.... 

The Mazda3 TCR....  

Coincidentally, we have a rental 2019 Mazda 3 sedan while the Kia dealer takes a mulligan on a couple of issues with the Rondo.  It's brand new (I started driving it at 370 km) and it's quite nice, but I was very relieved to discover I can shut off the automatic-rumble-strips thing.  The car thinks I'm going to head-on somebody if I cross the yellow line, so it panics, but I know I'm just going around a bicyclist on a country road.  Putting on my signal would pacify the nanny but confuse anyone behind me.

I still don't know how to make the radio work, but (a) I'm an old guy and (b) I'm sure that's in the manual too if I look.

One odd thing: Mazda heats only the handgrip areas on the side of the steering wheel.  This is my first heated wheel, so I dunno: does everybody do that?

Oh, and the other odd thing (much more annoying): if you drive this thing at night on a suburban street with streetlights, you get two reflections or something that run across the bottom of your windshield every single damn time you drive under a light, which is like every 200 feet.  For a car I was going to keep, that would be a deal-breaker right there.

Further to my last post: We all know that the GRM connection to Mazda runs deep, but I have now discovered just how deep.

Above, I wrote that I hadn't figured out how to work the radio yet (because I know how to do knobs but not "infotainment.")  So, a couple of minutes after writing that post, I went out to run a couple of errands in the 3.  As soon as I started it up, the radio came to life out of nowhere, playing Spanish pop music and telling me (I think; it was all in Spanish) a bunch of stuff about Nicaragua.  Then the display showed "Enter voice command."  OK, I thought, I'll play along, so I said, clearly and distinctly, "Turn.  Off."

The nice robot lady replied, "Turning.  Display.  Off."  And, by golly, she did, too, leaving me driving around the streets of Oshawa in a shiny new Mazda with a square foot of blackness on its dash, listening to mariachi music whether I liked it or not.

I'm back home now.  Hey, Mazda?  If you're still monitoring my posts, I just want you to know that I brought the owner's manual inside with me.  This isn't over.

That is part of the "multicultural package". Next week, the car will make you listen to didgeridoo music all day.

New Mazdas are pretty nice cars for sure. They're a very cohesive platform. You would not believe what talks to what in that car to make everything work. The windshield wipers will affect how the AWD system behaves.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

"The windshield wipers will affect how the AWD system behaves". Right there is why I will never own a car newer than my 1990 Volvo.

Why not? It lets the AWD system work much better, it can be proactive. If the wipers are on, it’s raining. This means it’s slippery even if it’s warm outside. If it’s cold and the wipers are on, it’s nasty out there. Adjust to suit instead of “slip and grip”.

What you’re seeing is the result of everything being networked. It cuts down on a lot of wiring already, having modules chatter over the network instead of needing 2-3 wires to report to one other module that might be at the other end of the car. And if the information is on the network, why not use it? The wiper switch is already broadcasting that the wipers have been requested. The exterior air temp sensor is already telling everything else what the exterior temp is (the HVAC uses it, for example). It’s just a bit of clever code. 

Another example. The TPMS system may be indirect (ND Miatas vary). That means that it has no dedicated $50 battery powered sensors with a short lifespan in every wheel and no antennas. It uses the ABS wheel sensors to measure wheel speed (this is nothing new). It also uses the steering angle sensor to calculate corner radius and thus the expected differential wheel speed as the car corners, which allows it to detect if all four tires have low pressure (this is new). Voila, smart reuse of existing information. The car also doesn’t have a speedo signal, it uses those wheel speed sensors. So it’s actually simpler because it’s smarter.

Once the car became a platform, all sorts of interesting possibilities arose. 

Keith Tanner said:

Why not? It lets the AWD system work much better, it can be proactive. If the wipers are on, it’s raining. This means it’s slippery even if it’s warm outside. If it’s cold and the wipers are on, it’s nasty out there. Adjust to suit instead of “slip and grip”.

What you’re seeing is the result of everything being networked. It cuts down on a lot of wiring already, having modules chatter over the network instead of needing 2-3 wires to report to one other module that might be at the other end of the car. And if the information is on the network, why not use it? The wiper switch is already broadcasting that the wipers have been requested. The exterior air temp sensor is already telling everything else what the exterior temp is (the HVAC uses it, for example). It’s just a bit of clever code. 

Another example. The TPMS system may be indirect (ND Miatas vary). That means that it has no dedicated $50 battery powered sensors with a short lifespan in every wheel and no antennas. It uses the ABS wheel sensors to measure wheel speed (this is nothing new). It also uses the steering angle sensor to calculate corner radius and thus the expected differential wheel speed as the car corners, which allows it to detect if all four tires have low pressure (this is new). Voila, smart reuse of existing information. The car also doesn’t have a speedo signal, it uses those wheel speed sensors. So it’s actually simpler because it’s smarter.

Once the car became a platform, all sorts of interesting possibilities arose. 

very cool!

It was pretty cold the other morning, so the first cold day of the season warning light came on.......

Got back and put 5psi into each.....   I guess that is a good nanny........   scared my wife though..........

more to come..... 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

So true. I used to be the "nannies are garbage, they slow me down, my name is John Henry". Then I bought a 2017 crosstrek. That AWD knows things before I do. It politely tells me it's doing stuff when I hear the ABS kicking in for left right stuff, and the "AWD" light says "hey you got power to the back now, have fun."

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

Been doing the 10K changes for years. 

Hey if the factory says I can,  why not.

In reply to oldeskewltoy :

Shame.  This time of year you need to check pressures often.and on a new car especially.

The AWD in the new 3 is killer. All of the fancy programming is what makes it that way. I just had one for a week and took it to a track day in sopping wet conditions - it provided the utmost confidence and was easy to drive as fast as I dared. It is better than traditional "slip and grip" setups because of all the communication and software - anticipation rather than reaction is what you get as a result.

Well... we have accumulated 4000 miles.   Gas mileage is up a bit... but nothing like 30+ mpg, we are getting mid 20s.   It took us some time, but we dug through some of the settings, and we turned off the lane worry-wort part of the system  -  I like to hover near a lanes edge so I can get glimpses of whats happening 3-10 cars in front of me...   

We still have yet to figure out how to make the Cruise dumber too - too much interference from the front monitors reducing the cars speed much sooner then either of us would like... I think we'll look into this later, when we have a highway trip significant enough to want/need it.

We have our first dent  parking lot door ding in d/s rear 1/4 - no idea who caused it..... not too bad, no lost paint, still gets me angry.

Now...  comparing Zen to Surreptitious (1983 AE71 Corolla)  is very interesting....   The first thing for me... visibility out of my Corolla is natural, I have few if any blind spots, the Mazda3 has horrible blind spots... including the "A" pillars...  I ALMOST pulled out and hit someone because I lost that person in the "A" pillar... who "loses" someone in the "A" pillar???  

While not as big as the old IS300 Sport Cross, the Mazda3 still takes up quite a bit of the lane, and with visibility a challenge, it is tough to know how close to the right side of a lane you are (w/o lane monitoring), although I have found myself getting braver in squeaking past a left turn positioned car.   Now in the Corolla, I barely have to slow to get around a car making a left, and I know exactly where I'm at in the lane.   Additionally sudden maneuvers are a LOT easier in the Corolla.

Zen does have her benefits.... the biggest is traction, remember the one "flaw" I left in Surreptitious was an open final drive - (I didn't/don't like the "push" feeling that comes from most LSD types, at least in the Corolla.)

Heated seats..... ​​​​​​​  Quieter too.

oldeskewltoy said:

Now...  comparing Zen to Surreptitious (1983 AE71 Corolla)  is very interesting....   The first thing for me... visibility out of my Corolla is natural, I have few if any blind spots, the Mazda3 has horrible blind spots... including the "A" pillars...  I ALMOST pulled out and hit someone because I lost that person in the "A" pillar... who "loses" someone in the "A" pillar???  

My newest car is a 1988 model, and I notice that whenever I get in a late model car as well.  The worst was a Dodge Charger I had as a rental vehicle - it had A pillars as thick as fence posts.  I suppose it has to do with current rollover protection requirements.