Greetings Zoomers,
This is geared for all of the southern US owners out there.
I'm a lifelong Mazda guy. I started life with an MX-3 in high school and about midway through college I got a used 2002 Protege5 hatch stick I'm still in today. I love driving stick as much as I love hatches, and in spite of the backend weight, the P5 has still been an absolute hummingbird around corners.
Now at 21 it's really showing its age and I'm looking pretty hard at getting a M3 stick hatch (once the prices come down and are even available) but the concern I keep coming back to is the performance of the A/C in relation to the size of the vehicle.
You see, I live in Texas, and for the last 2.5 months its been 100+ degrees here, it was 108 just today. My Protege5 still blows cold air but even with everything cranked to the max, my kids in the backseats are drenched by the time I get them home from the babysitter. I realize there's really not much I can do about the climate Armageddon but I would have hoped that Mazda's climate control system has improved in the last 20 years. By contrast my wife's Rav4 gets fairly cool and comfortable after we get going but its obviously a larger vehicle and I assume it has a beefier condenser unit. So the question is, how does the 3 perform in hot climates? Am I just at the mercy of physics? Are the CX crossovers any better? Should I just bite the bullet and go with a crossover instead? I haven't test driven one yet but its on my to-do list.
Thanks in adv. for responses/feedback.
This is geared for all of the southern US owners out there.
I'm a lifelong Mazda guy. I started life with an MX-3 in high school and about midway through college I got a used 2002 Protege5 hatch stick I'm still in today. I love driving stick as much as I love hatches, and in spite of the backend weight, the P5 has still been an absolute hummingbird around corners.
Now at 21 it's really showing its age and I'm looking pretty hard at getting a M3 stick hatch (once the prices come down and are even available) but the concern I keep coming back to is the performance of the A/C in relation to the size of the vehicle.
You see, I live in Texas, and for the last 2.5 months its been 100+ degrees here, it was 108 just today. My Protege5 still blows cold air but even with everything cranked to the max, my kids in the backseats are drenched by the time I get them home from the babysitter. I realize there's really not much I can do about the climate Armageddon but I would have hoped that Mazda's climate control system has improved in the last 20 years. By contrast my wife's Rav4 gets fairly cool and comfortable after we get going but its obviously a larger vehicle and I assume it has a beefier condenser unit. So the question is, how does the 3 perform in hot climates? Am I just at the mercy of physics? Are the CX crossovers any better? Should I just bite the bullet and go with a crossover instead? I haven't test driven one yet but its on my to-do list.
Thanks in adv. for responses/feedback.