Like npaladin2000 stated, put winter tires on it in the winter and it does great. Mine was awesome this past winter with my Michelin Xi3 tires. And like 10spokess stated, it comes down to driver skill. The new Mazda3 has traction control, stability control, and ABS, like all other cars sold...
I'm definitely going. That reminds me, I ordered my tickets from the Belle Isle site more than a month ago and I still don't have the ticket. Is that to be expected? Have they not sent them out, yet?
EDIT: Never mind. I looked up the email from them. It says tickets are mailed after April...
I noticed the coverage issue, too. I got a short but deep gouge in my front bumper. No idea how, other than maybe a snow shovel by one of the guys we hired to shovel during the winter when I got fed up with shoveling. It's right in front of, and parallel to, the driver's side headlight. I...
The band my installer uses is Johnson Window Films. The rear windows have 5 (5% transmission) and the fronts are the lightest they offered, I think 50.
Here's a snowy one:
That sucks, and makes me more nervous about my new 3. I'm wondering if it's possible your new car actually was in an accident and then resold as a new? I've read stories of dealers in the U.S. doing that (Illegally, if course).
Sounds like it was a fairly minor OEM coil issue. Those things are going to happen, especially on a brand new design. They're inconvenient, and I've been worried about these kinds of things buying my 3 so soon after they went on sale, but in the grand scheme of things, a coil failure isn't...
It's probably because of the fancy triple-layer paint used to make Soul Red, but this touch up paint I bought from Mazda is the poorest matching OEM touch up paint I've ever used, and I've used quite a few over the years. It's significantly lighter in color than the factory paint, to the point...
Yeah, they're not so clean, anymore. I still try to polish them when I handwash the car, but they're never going to be that clean again. The exhaust temperatures from the rotary engine discolored them pretty quickly, too.
I've also heard that using a full synthetic oil with a very low NOACK volatility can reduce that carbon buildup. A coworker of mine who is a bit of a gearhead and just purchased a car with a DI engine did some research. He's now an AMSOIL dealer just so that he can order AMSOIL oils at dealer...
I hand washed, clay barred, and waxed my 3 Friday afternoon/evening. Finally got some decent (not great, but decent) photos of it with the window tint and OZ Racing wheels. The full Google album can be seen here...
It looks like the OEM ones won't damage the paint from the support pillars, either. The Yakama rack I had for a summer on my 2012 Focus left marks on the paint, even though I carefully cleaned it before installation and used ScratchX on it afterward. I suspect it will still cause tons of wind...
I'm not normally a white car fan, but while I was at the dealer yesterday getting maintenance done on my RX-8 I was looking at a white Mazda3s hatchback and a white Mazda6. They both looked really good in white.