I test drove quite a few cars over the past few months, and eventually arrived at a new 2011 Mazda 3S sport in a 6MT. The car is black, and fairly basic. Of course it's fairly slow compared to my Bimmer, but peppy enough to get around town. It's actually fairly fun to drive, and has the best steering feedback of any FWD car I've ever driven. Overall, for an economy based commuter, I would say it's the best car in it's class, and I say that having driven Civic's, Sentra's, Mini's, Corolla's, Cobalt's, Impreza's ect. Sporty, without being harsh. Overall seems pretty easy to live with, and a pretty good bang for your buck.
While anyone who knows me, knows that I have no brand loyalty to speak of (i.e. the list of cars I've owned haha!), I came back to another Mazda not based on being in love with the brand, but for two very good reasons: IMO, it's the best FWD commuter in it's class, and I just couldn't pass up the value of the vehicle.
I originally was looking at used cars, and looked into a used Mazda 3, but the prices on them just don't drop fast enough in order to justify the purchase over a new one with the incentives Mazda is giving out.
I bought the car via my old buddy & former co-worker Josh Robitaille at Groove Mazda (formerly Burt) off of Arapahoe Rd. Of course since I used to work with the guy, as well as with Chris Chapman (now the new car manager), everything went very smooth, although Josh has always been easy to work with, regardless of who the customer was.
I ended up getting right around book value on my trade-in (slightly higher than NADA clean trade-in value
), and I picked up the MZ3 for invoice. On top of that, I ended up getting an additional $500 Mazda loyalty rebate because I currently own a Mazda haha (go Miata!!). Even further, since I owed more on my BMW than the purchase price of the 3, I paid no taxes (take that state of Colorado haha!). Finally, the kicker that sealed the deal, is that Mazda is giving out 0% interest for 60 months! So yeah, paid below invoice, paid no taxes, got book for my trade and will pay $0 in interest over the next 5 years (assuming I keep it that long haha!). I just couldn't pass this deal up.... for the same term, my monthly payment went down DRASTICALLY! My insurance also went down, and the 3 gets better fuel economy and take regular gas (vs. premium for the BMW). Based on a total collective savings of all 3 of those things combined, I'm looking at saving around an extra ~$220/month on a brand new car with a full warranty and cheaper maintenance costs! I won't lie, there's part of me that will miss my Bimmer, but at the moment, I'm surprisingly happy with the little 3 hatch.
Either way, it's late at night, and while I'll take good photos in the daytime later, for now, I just took this crappy shot with my iPhone4 cam:
In the past, I've had a knack for trading cars in quickly, so I suppose we'll see how long this one lasts haha!
As a side note, I haven't peeked at my credit in a while now... I've always had good credit, but holy shit, it was never this good! It's usually come in around the 715-730 mark; I know they recently revamped the credit rating system a bit, and it's been a few months since I've checked mine, but tonight it came in at 786! I have a couple basic theories about what could have bumped it up so much, but either way, I'm not complaining haha! Interesting stuff to say the least.
Either way, have a good one and thanks for reading.
-Brandon
Hope the new job is worth it.
