By DriverSide

DriverSide

You have to love factory tuner cars and the companies willing to sell them. They put their reputation on the line, slapping their badge and warranty on big-winged, look-at-me designs that boast bloated horsepower numbers and raspy exhaust notes. With some automakers, you know you aren’t looking at much more than some fatter wheels wrapped in ultra low-pro rubber and a fake hood scoop, so it’s hard to get excited. But when Mazda gets involved in the factory tuner game – a company where Zoom-Zoom conveniently works both as a catchy marketing riff and a to-the-death engineering mantra – you know good things are just around the corner. Bizarro two-tier semantics aside, Mazda got a lot right with its first shot at the Mazdaspeed3 back in 2007. Wisely then, they aren’t fiddling with the recipe too much. Crammed into the shell of the new 2010 Mazda3 is the same drivetrain as the last Mazdaspeed3, which would be a 263 horsepower turbocharged engine, six-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip front differential. And because Mazda is mindful enough to keep a North American engineering staff on hand to fine tune vehicles for our market, we get the most hardcore version of them all. Front-drive hoons have never had it so good.

Continue reading "We Drive the Mazdaspeed3" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Owing to a small glitch with our photos, the EV Duster made an appearance in this week’s Showroom Showdown. It actually held the lead in the voting for a short period, but then the WRX took over, and it was all Subaru for the rest of the contest. Subaru had a bunch of boring pics on their site, so I decided to use this pic of Vivid Racing’s WRX. Pretty hot.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

You’ll notice I didn’t put a year in front of the WRX—that’s because I can’t find anything on the 2010 car. I assume it won’t be a whole lot different from the 2009 WRX. But the MAZDASPEED3 is all new for 2010. The Mazda’s turbo 2.3 liter inline four is said to produce 256 hp, while the Subie’s turbo 2.5 liter boxer four should make at least 265 hp. The Subie is AWD and comes with a 5 speed, while the Mazda is FWD and comes with a 6 speed. Both cars weigh around 3,150 pounds and are priced pretty close to the $25k mark. Which would you choose?

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

The new Mazda3 leaves me cold, but the Mazdaspeed version looks a bit better. It is expected to have roughly the same power as its predecessor (268 hp), but less torque steer thanks to the RevoKnuckle FWD suspension system from the Ford Focus RS. More details will be available later this week. Via Motor Authority

Continue reading "2010 Mazdaspeed3" »

This week’s Showroom Showdown wasn’t even close. I almost stopped counting, but then decided to just stick it out. I came up with 80 to 30 in favor of the MAZDASPEED3. I guess it shouldn’t come as a huge surpise, but still, Chevy went down hard on this one. And with GM stock tanking heavily this week, it just feels like piling on.

This week’s Showroom Showdown features two fun and practical family haulers. The Chevy weighs 3,280 pounds and has a turbo 2.0 liter four banger which puts out 260 hp. The Mazda weighs 3,153 pounds and has a 2.3 liter turbo four banger rated at 263 hp. The Mazda is available with a 6 speed manual (the HHR only comes with a 5 speed manual) but the HHR gets slightly better gas mileage (21/29 vs. Mazda’s 18/26). Both cars come in near the $25k mark. So, which would you choose?

The MAZDASPEED3 scored a solid victory in this week’s Showroom Showdown, but it didn’t exactly trounce the GTI. By my count it was 43 to 30 votes in favor of the Mazda. Many people seemed to feel that the extra horsepower gave the Mazda the edge over the VW.

Let me know what cars you’d like to see in next week’s match-up!

If you want a hot hatch and have $23K burning a hole in your pocket, there are two obvious choices: the MAZDASPEED3 and the GTI. With the Mazda you get that whole Japanese reliability thing and four doors. With the GTI you get "German engineering" (what does that mean, exactly?), a choice of two or four doors, and the optional DSG tranny. Now, this isn’t an even match in terms of hp–the Mazda has a big advantage there (263 vs the VW’s 200) but hey, horsepower isn’t everything, is it? The last time we pitted a VW against a Mazda, it was the Polo vs. the Mazda2, and the Mazda won. To be on the safe side I usually run these match-ups by Sean, especially ones involving imports. This one had him stumped, so I’m feeling pretty good about it (then again, Sean owns a GTI, so maybe he wasn’t the right guy to ask this time). So, which would you choose, the wild child or the hopped up Rabbit?