Overall this is really great car. I have over 45000 miles on it and have had to nothing other than normal preventive maintenance service like oil changes, tire rotations, etc. There are no rattles, knocking or strange engine noises. It seems to maintain alignment fairly well, no bad tire wear even after a winter that left the roads in bad shape. The trunk is quite spacious, I was able to carry to tires and a small suitcase back in it. The car has great safety features with lots of air bags, seat belts, and hooks for car seats. It comes with plenty of features, including heated seats, sun roof, power seats, power mirrors, back up camera, side mirror warning light indicators (in case someone is in your blind spot), USB connections, navigation system, Bluetooth connection, Bose sound system, and much more. It also gets pretty great gas mileage, I average about 35 mpg on the highway and maybe 27 or so in town. It has great pick up when I hit the gas and the I don't worry about not stopping when I hit the brakes, no mushy braking in this ride.

First of all, a Mazda 3 was not our first choice. We only considered it because Ford bought Mazda, and the prices were good. After a test drive, and a little haggling, we were on our way. The car itself handles good except on ice. For some reason it likes to play slip-n-slide even though all the weight is on the front end and it's front wheel drive. Keep a close eye on your antenna as well. Ours has been stolen five or six times. Ours came with a 6 CD changer, sun/moon roof. One thing you HAVE to do is change the oil regularly. See, it doesn't have a regular oil filter, but a cartridge that fits into a plastic housing. The next thing to remember is that once something goes wrong, there's a cascade effect. Ours started a short time after a leak in the valve cover gasket popped up. It appeared to be in two places, but you won't see that unless you check under the plastic engine cover - where the coil packs are located. We kept changing the oil, and putting more in as needed - it's not cheap to have the valve cover gasket replaced - mostly because of labor. Until the engine gave up the ghost after 7 years the car ran great. There was no indication the engine was about to die until a few days before the upper and lower camshafts went. Even then it still started with a loud banging. Still we got almost 160,000 miles (at over 1,000 miles per week in the final 6 years) out of it before we had any major problems. We replaced the engine, and it's still running.