My cute little Mazda3 went home the other day, and I’m so sad.
The 2013 Mazda3 4-door Grand Touring in Velocity Red – in the driveway for a week’s trial
This jazzy bright red Mazda3 4-door Grand Touring car arrived one Friday recently. The red, which is know officially in Mazda-land as “Velocity Red” is actually my favorite car color and it was a twin to the red 2013 Nissan Altima that I own. The poor Altima had to move up to the end of the drive, however, so the Mazda3 could have pride of place.
The poor Altima also had to bear some tough comparisons as we drove the Mazda during the week. In fact, I could sum the whole experience up by saying that if I’d known the Mazda3 existed with the tech package this one had, I would not have leased an Altima.
And why did I not know? Because I’m not a car nut, freak or aficionado. I’ve never been to a car show; nor do I read the publications that normally review cars. My knowledge of new cars comes strictly from TV commercials and almost all of them are geared to a totally different audience. When I watch those commercials–if I even watch them–I have to ignore their blatant appeal to the young and with-it.
So how do I pick the cars I drive? From my friends’ experience and my own history. The automobile industry are among the few advertisers of general consumption products that are starting to get that and try to target our cohort.
The Mazda3 was delivered to my door by the kind people of STI Inc, “one of the nation’s most trusted automotive press fleet management companies ” supplying vehicles of all makes and models for review to major media outlets. They have a new Lifestyle/Social Media program–which is how I came to be a Press Vehicle Borrower.
I know that the popular image of Boomers pictures us slowing driving around town in the same vehicle we bought new in 1977. My, my, my–how that isn’t at all so. Boomer consumers are now outspending the young’uns on car purchases. And we are very particular about what we want in a new car.
Our vehicles are not extensions of our personalities the way they were when we were younger. Rather, the Boomer market is looking for how our cars accommodate to our changing bodies and abilities. When we care about a car’s acceleration, it’s not so we brag about how fast we went. We’re interested in the ease of driving and how safe we feel behind the wheel.
We took the Mazda3, which is billed as the Grand Touring model, on a grand tour of the West Valley, all the way to Ventura. That meant we were on freeways as well as the quirky little streets of the beach towns and two-lane winding mountain roads of the canyons. According to my husband, the Mazda3, which has the SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY has good power, which made him feel comfortable taking those hills–not to mention dealing with heavy LA Freeway traffic.
He also was impressed that his vision was good. Sad, but true, that the boomer neck isn’t as fluid as before and the design of some cars creates blind spots for us. My husband noted that there were no blindspots with the Mazda3 but if there were, the Mazda3 has a Blind Spot Monitoring system, which dings whenever you get too close to a car in either lane.
That’s a bell & whistle I wanted, but didn’t get on my Altima. The navigation package seemed somewhat easier as well. I don’t want to fiddle with my iPhone or (heaven forbid!) a paper map when I’m trying to go somewhere. I want to be able to easily input my destination and have that lady with the dulcet tones tell me when and where to turn. The Mazda3 was very responsive to my voice commands. I just touched the second button down on the left (it’s a microphone) to activate the voice commands. I said the name of the drug store I was going to and, boom, there were the instructions on the screen in front of me.
Touch the second button on the left–the microphone–and you’re in communication with the TomTom
I also liked the Mazda3’s technology package. I want my car to have a close and personal Bluetooth relationship with my iPhone so that my playlist streams from the car’s sound system and I can talk on the phone without holding it (which is against the law in California).
Touchscreen Audio–AM/FM, Sirius, Bluetooth, Pandora and a good old fashioned USB connection
I liked the way I could adjust the driver’s seat with easy-to-reach gizmos. My legs are longer than my 6’3″ husband’s legs. But his body is way bigger than mine. While I drive my car most of the time, when we’re going out, he drives and he needs to fit comfortably in the car. This was one of the virtues of the Mazda3 for him: “It’s good for a tall person. I didn’t have to worry about my head hitting the roof the way I do with so many other vehicles.”
The ease with which one 6’3″ 250+ man fits into the Mazda3
The one thing on my wish list that the Mazda3 had and the Altima doesn’t is a smaller footprint. The Mazda3 is just the right size to easily zip in and out of parking spots and it was a relief not to have to hold my breath while maneuvering through clogged city streets.
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…in the narrow residential streets of LA
The Mazda 3 sports an EPA Fuel Economy rating of 33 MPG. You can see from the photos I took of the dashboard that we were getting significantly higher MPG. Considering the price of gas these days (in LA we’re way over $4 a gallon!), those extra MPG make a difference.
Dashboard screen of the Mazda3 the day it went back
Frankly, there was only one criticism we could come up with: the gear shift is weird. The SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY-Drive 6-speed sport automatic transmission also features an optional manual shift mode. That made shifting gears even in automatic mode somewhat quirky. However, I could get used to that.
The ad slogan for the Mazda3 is “Far Reaching Fun.” That’s so out-of-date, so it’s-a-car-so-we’ve-got-to-appeal-to-the-young marketing think. Actually consumers 50 and older spent $87 billion on cars in 2010, compared to $70 billion spent by younger car purchasers, according to a 2011 study on baby-boomer spending by the consulting firm A.T. Kearney.
Mazda might want to rethink that ad campaign.
