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id stay with the civic no question. from a personal note i dont like any car made by ford. there trucks are nice but there cars, eh. no where near reliable as the civic. not to mention ONE DAY our civics will have more aftermarket parts. not yet, but one day.

 
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if i had a choice i might as well have gone with the rx-8 if i was going with any mazda

 
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Are you fuc*ing retarded? Seriously, do you have some problem with literacy, did you just read the subject and post whatever asinine thought was floating through your head? The Mazda3 is not made by Ford, read the first page of this thread and you'll see how that works.

 
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biased or not i'd like to hear your $.02.

 
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Don't hold your breath on after market parts.... if the 9th gen civic have K series motors, the after market is already built, and will skip right over the D17's.

Oops... I ment 8thgen civic

 
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Mazda 3 is a nice little car.

Interior is flashier than my Civic EX coupe Interior, but the materials seems like a lot of use of nylon and vynil.
The car has good pep in first gear in the low revs.
It comes with stickier tires stock than my car.
4 disk brakes.
Stiff shocks(I like that)

The car is built really nice I seen the underbody. I like the way the exhaust is protected, brake lines, abs .... I don't know how the maintenance is on a Mazda 3 is, but its very easy to maintain a Honda civic Ex coupe(oil change, brakes, transmission oil, brakes, suspension .....).

I went on the Mazda3 forums and its not exactly the fastest car in the 1/4 mile. It's a low 16 second car and some guys have 15.99, but those are stock times. (tested 2.3 160 hp hatch)

In terms of HP it has an advantage(I tested 148 hp version), but my 127 hp seems pretty peppy. Civic definately feels sportier IMO. I know nookiemonster wont agree but I like the feel of the civic. The Mazda 3 has a more secure heavy feel which some people like. The flywheel seems heavier on the Mazda 3, even if you let of the accelerator the car doesn't loose speed quickly, and the car will just cruise. You can just mash through the gears and your shifts will be smooth, in that department there is a night and day diff between the civic EX coupe transmission feel and the feel of the Mazda 3. Civic coupe ex you can shift and feel the stick slip in at the appropriate time like butter, and you feel every mess up if you slip the clutch or the synchros resist. Although the skidpath of the Mazda 3 is better as Nookiemonster has shown me, my car seems to understeer less on the road then the mazda 3(maybe I wasn't use to the mazda 3). In the civic I felt more connected to the car not only transmssion, engine but suspension as well. Mazda 3 a little distant when you pushed it hard(I drove the 148hp)

 
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Haha, I agree with you on some points. Mainly the feel of the shifter. The civic shifter is so smooth and easy...a little less notchy than the 3's. You can blame it on a direct link vs cable shift setup.

In the end, I did buy a 2004 civic rather than a 3...I got it for a better deal, and frankly for a commuter economy car, I'll take the better deal...especially since I let my mom drive it.

 
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At least your mom can drive a manual...

 
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Isn't there a new ford that is coming out based on the 3 though? Not that makes the 3 a Ford or anything. Suppose to be bigger than the Focus and smaller than the Taruas.

 
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Ford Fusion? I think. . . doesn't matter tho, even if it uses some mazda3 parts it will still be a Ford and therefore JUNK.

 
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that doesn't make sense. if the mazda 3 is good and the fusion uses mazda 3 parts then why wouldn't it be just as good? this must be the preconceptions we're talking about.

 
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The Fusion is based off the 6 I believe.
The 3's block is from Ford and most of its suspension even says Ford Motor Co on it, via pics off mazda3forums that I can't seem to find at the moment. That's not necessarily bad though, I was quite impressed with our rental focus's suspension.

 
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Yeah the fusion... that's what I thinking of, you're right it was the 6 not the 3 though. I don't know where the suspension for the 3 came from, but if it indeed from a focus, that's not bad. TheSVT has very impressive numbers, and the regular focus I drove was good too, lack of power, but that's a different topic.

 
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^It's really a shame they didn't build a better car around that suspension. It's got to be the best econo suspension I've ever driven.

 
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I mentioned a while back I think, maybe on the first or second pages, though I can't recall that the new Focus will be based off of the 3. We may or may not see that Focus in North America, presently its being reserved for the Europeans who have come to expect more from the Focus (and have been rewarded, eg: Focus RS, etc.). Also, the Volvo S40 (and was it the V70 too?) is based off the same platform as the 3, I believe Volvo even had a hand in some of the safety design for the platform (which, if anyone knows Volvo's safety record is a good thing). The S40 though has a turboed I5 in it though if I'm not mistaken which has been tweaked to some v. v. good HP numbers.

Responding to the person who said that some of the suspension components are FoMoCo, that is true to a point. Theres also some Mitsubishi vacuum line components on the car somewhere too I think, but thats neither here nor there. Ford has never really been critisized for it's suspension and if you've ever driven in an SVT Focus (which shares more suspension architecture w. the 3 than the base Focus) then you can attest to that. In fact, I think earlier on there was some talk of certain SVT Focus parts matching up for a possible swap, which would have been v. convenient.

Aftermarket-wise, the 3 is coming along v. nicely, its been out for a bit over a year now and already theres 4 brands of CAI available for it, about just as many exhausts, a chip for fine-tuning being released soon (CanBus ECU is a pain in the as* apparently..), one or two turbo kits in the works due to be released in the coming months and a whole slew of suspension upgrades. I've been on these boards for over a year now (just read before signing up myself for an account..) and from what it seems to me the 3 is having aftermarket parts developed for it a lot faster than the 7th gen. Civic. It seems to be that tuners have v. much abandoned the D series in favour of cars bearing the K series, but thats just conjecture on my behalf.

The 3 is not built by Ford though, it was built in -Japan- and the design of the car is purely Mazda. I don't mean to snap at anyone who says otherwise, but its been said a thousand times over on this board by people other than me.

 
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In terms of rear suspension. The rear sway bar on the Mazda 3 go through the arms on the rear suspension in between the center piece(holding the arms) and the struts. Tuners have noticed even after upgrading the bar to a thicker one it really didn't change the balance of the car. Just something to note if your gonna be AutoXing or road racing. Maybe you need to upgrade the busghings as well. In the civics the anti roll bar is attatched to the chassis not the rear suspension arms.

 
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Die thread die!!!

 
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^^^ lol,

...well nobody can diss the mazda3 handling, it performs great.