I do like a compact saloon.
My first car was a Triumph Acclaim, about which there was little to like, but handsome styling just looks nicer on the better-balanced silhouette of a three-box car, doesn’t it?
So I keenly accepted the offer of a week in the 3 Fastback and with interest chucked various bulky items in, such as child seats and buggies, to see how it compared with a similarly priced hatchback for practicality.
The 3 Fastback has the same wheelbase as the hatch but is 120mm longer in the rear overhang. Load up the boot and you can tell; where hatchback owners will be used to loading a folded baby buggy sideways into the boot, it will go longways into the Fastback, in turn making easier work of squeezing in everything else.
The relative shallowness of the boot was no obstacle, but I do wish Mazda had weighted the bootlid hinges to make the lid open all the way when you press the release on the key fob. Instead, it opens only halfway – so you might as well reach for the boot handle anyway.
Our time is nearly up
Took a trip to Aberdeen to drive the facelifted Mazda 3.
Good news: a new G-Vectoring Control system makes the car feel more stable through corners and there are mild but effective upgrades for the exterior styling and interior equipment.
Bad news: because the updated car is now on sale, our pre-facelift car will soon be leaving Autocar’s fleet.
MAZDA 3 1.5 DIESEL SPORT NAV FASTBACK
Price £21,945 Price as tested £22,605 Economy 56.2mpg Faults None Expenses None Last seen 21.9.16
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Matt Saunders
As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.
Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.
Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.
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Along with the A3 saloon, the
Talk about a first world problem ...
What a load of nonsense!
Gutted