Hello from London

[Tokyoround]

I went to look at some cars today, drove an A3, 1 series, Golf and Mazda 3. Loved the Mazda, got a good deal on this ex-demonstrator top spec 2 litre Sport Nav with only 600 miles. Only thing I don't like is the handbrake position. Picking it up on Wednesday

 

[ceric]

Welcome, and what is wrong with the position of the handbrake?

 

[Chibana]

Nice. Welcome!

 

[concept]

Great choice of color. You will love it.
Sent from my Windows Phone 8X by HTC using Tapatalk

 

[rdrokit]

Welcome from another M3 owner who has the steering wheel on the "right" side.

 

[rochrunner]

You haven't explained your handbrake complaint, but I can see from the picture that the console appears to have been designed primarily for left-hand drive so that with right-hand drive the commander knob is on the "wrong" side of the handbrake. I can see how that is inconvenient and would not fall naturally to hand. Somewhat surprising given that their home market -- Japan -- also drives on the wrong side of the road . OTOH, their sales in North America alone probably outstrip all of the right-drive countries and it would not be cost effective to engineer a specific console for them.

 

[ceric]

Wait. What is wrong with handbrake on the side closer to the driver?
I missed the point?

 

[lowincash]

The first and second gen mazda3 has the hand brake closer to the passenger side. I much prefer it being towards the driver side as it just feels more natural. Looking at the picture, it just feels odd having all the controls sorta backwards lol