Greetings! This forum has been very helpful already as I spent quite a bit of time researching our decision to purchase a Mazda5. My wife and I have a 3 year old and a little one on the way, and wanted a little more room than our 2001 RAV4 offered. A full-size minivan (what a misnomer) wasn't in the cards, and my wife fell in love with the Mazda5 as soon as she opened the sliding doors and took it for a drive. Our daughter no longer can kick our seats sitting in her car seat in the roomy second row, and we don't have to move our seats forward to give her more room. The third row seats are a bonus for transporting visitors around town, but we'll likely enjoy the large cargo area more often. Plus, the Mazda5 drives, rides, and accelerates much better than our RAV4 ever did, is much quieter, and should beat our average gas mileage from the RAV4 of 19-20 mpg with combined driving.
From researching this site, I was a bit worried about tire wear. As suggested by other Mazda5 owners, I'll definitely rotate the tires every oil change to try to make the stock Toyos last as long as possible. It seems like more folks complained about premature tire wear from the previous generations, but only time will tell.
Attached is a pic from the day after we drove it home. I was a bit worried about trading in our AWD in exchange for a FWD, but the Mazda5 did great running errands throughout the day as the freezing rain turned to sleet, and then to snow. Being able to manually lock the transmission in 2nd gear, in addition to the traction control, really helps it get up our icy driveway.
So far I'm very happy with our purchase. The dealer tinted all of the windows for us (35% on the front, 20% on the rear and tailgate), which makes it look a bit sportier. I like to work on our cars myself, so I'm looking forward to quite a few projects. More on those later as I gather links from this forum.
From researching this site, I was a bit worried about tire wear. As suggested by other Mazda5 owners, I'll definitely rotate the tires every oil change to try to make the stock Toyos last as long as possible. It seems like more folks complained about premature tire wear from the previous generations, but only time will tell.
Attached is a pic from the day after we drove it home. I was a bit worried about trading in our AWD in exchange for a FWD, but the Mazda5 did great running errands throughout the day as the freezing rain turned to sleet, and then to snow. Being able to manually lock the transmission in 2nd gear, in addition to the traction control, really helps it get up our icy driveway.
So far I'm very happy with our purchase. The dealer tinted all of the windows for us (35% on the front, 20% on the rear and tailgate), which makes it look a bit sportier. I like to work on our cars myself, so I'm looking forward to quite a few projects. More on those later as I gather links from this forum.
Attachments
Last edited:
