Good things come in small packages
First Drive: 2016 Mazda Cx-3,
Five minutes behind the wheel and I’m wishing the road was twistier. An hour later, I get my wish, and it’s bliss, joy, nirvana.
But first, the usual gnashing of teeth and rending of garments: another crossover? Ugh. Ack. Bleah. Where’s our reborn RX-7? Where’s our turbo-nutter ‘ Speed3? This is cowboy country, so where’s the beef, Mazda?
Permit me to outline what would happen if Mazda did stuff a rotary motor into some stretched, coupe-ized version of the excellent ND MX-5. “Hooray!” the masses would shout, and immediately rush to a competing dealership to buy something with four doors and a jacked-up ride height. Mazda would sell a few hundred cars in Canada every year and would shortly shutter up its Hiroshima factory.
Instead, we get a compact crossover with a rotary knob for its infotainment system — a car people might actually want to buy. It has a 2.0L fourcylinder engine. It has available all-wheel-drive. It has a standard push-button starter, a backup camera, and available satellite navigation.
These are all good, useful things that normal people like. But are you a lunatic? Because this thing is capital F-A-S-T fast. Not sprightly and quick, fast: fast enough to furrow the brow of a WRX owner when the road gets twisty. The Mazda CX-3 is within a millimetre or so of being as good to drive as the fourth-generation MX5. It is lively, engaging, and they need to stuff a 300 horsepower engine in it yesterday so I can take it to the track and beat up on sportscars.
What Mazda has done here is build a Protege5 for today. You remember that car, of course, a zippy little hatchback that was low on power but high on fun; all the rev-the-nuts-off-it spirit of a Miata except with a hatchback to bung your hockey bag in. Like the old GLC, the P5 was a Great Little Car, but unlike the GLC, it was actually quick.
Like the Protege5, the CX-3 has a modicum of practicality. It’s a little shorter than the Mazda3 hatch, slightly taller, and has the aforementioned four doors and a trunk. The seating position is high enough to provide good forward visibility for battling traffic, and unlike the Nissan Juke, my average 5’11” frame can ( just barely) fit behind the driver’s seat when it’s set to my seating position.
However, this is not as practical a car as Honda’s coming HR-V. It doesn’t have clever multi-fold seats, and there’s the sense that Mazda engineers spent months on the drivetrain and five minutes figuring out where stuff like cupholders should fit (where your elbow goes, apparently). The trunk is also quite compact, at 408L (for the GT), although there’s some small sub-floor storage, and a proper donut spare. It’s better than some competitors, but is still a car designed for a singleton or a young couple sans kids.
I remember what that was like, before kids. You could have nice stuff. Inside and out, the CX-3 qualifies as nice stuff. It looks great crouched at the curb, hunchy and pouncy, ready to spring. And look at its little snarly face — this is how you do aggressive without designing your car to look like a foaming-mouthed imbecile. It reminds me of a more angular Infiniti FX.
The base car gets steelies, the mid-trim gets 16-inch alloys, and 18-inch machine-faced rims come on the GT level. Like the Mazda3, I’d like to have seen 17-inches on the mid-spec car, but the 16-inches don’t look too small.
Inside, the CX-3 makes Mercedes’ entry-level models look cheap. The tacked-on look of the infotainment screen is the single error in a sweeping dash that has less dust-attracting piano-black trim than other Mazda models. Everything feels good to the touch, from the solid air vents to the size of the steering wheel. There are little muted splashes of colour in leather on the centre console and on the dashboard. There’s a real hand-operated parking brake. The faux carbon-fibre trim is matte-finished and tucked away in the door handles. The glovebox is big enough to serve as a kennel for a Dachsund.
It’s great, although there are a few areas where style has taken a backseat to modern ergonomic requirement. For instance, the twin USB ports in the dash are situated in front of a helpfully rubberized pad that is not-quite big enough for a larger smartphone. If you want to tuck your phone in the elbow-cupholders, you’ll have to run the cable a fair length.
Overall though, the CX-3 looks more expensive than it is; it actually looks like it should cost more than a CX5. It’s also hugely improved in terms of road and engine noise versus previous Mazda cars. On cold start, the first high-compression engines in the previous-generation Mazda3 sounded like an outboard motor stuck in a cutlery drawer. Here, the CX-3 settles to a barely-audible hum.
The 2.0L four-cylinder makes 146 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 146 pound-feet of torque at 2,800 rpm. Mazda claims fuel economy figures of 8.2 litres per 100 kilometres city and 6.7 L/100 km highway for the front-wheel-drive version, and 8.8 L/100 km city and 7.3 L/100km highway for all-wheel-drive.
It’s a little less punch than the same engine makes in the Mazda3, thanks to a more restrictive exhaust routing required by the CX-3’s compact footprint. Still, it’s responsive, and it’s my experience with other Mazda products that their high-compression engines, specially-shaped pistons, multi-point direct injection, and all that other voodoo the engineers love to shovel in your ears about simply works. It works. Drive the CX-3 gently and it doesn’t hit you in the pocketbook. Hammer the bejesus out of the throttle and it’s still pretty decent.
The sole transmission choice is a conventional sixspeed automatic that shifts relatively quickly, and never makes you wish for a manual option. I’d not be surprised to see a front-driver with a manual at some point, but you don’t need the stick shift to stir up some fun in this little car.
Caster angles, torsion-beam rear suspension with high pivot angles, centre of gravity, ride height, blah blah blah. While all of this stuff is important, it’s like obsessing over the specific frequencies of the notes in your favourite song. Never mind the details, just know that the CX-3 plays a tune you can dance to.
On a wriggly ribbon of road just past the ghost town of Jerome — a sun-baked ripple of tarmac that looks like an Xray of somebody’s intestines — the CX-3 boogies like a Miata wearing a backpack. Charge into the rev-limiter, hang it on redline and then slither through the corners like a bright blue marble down a drainpipe. It’s more than competent, it’s a screamer.
But for the sales success of this car, its handling prowess is of muted relevance. More important is the good news here about the CX-3’s everyday attributes: it’s pretty, it’s quiet and comfortable, it gets solid fuel economy, the pricing is accessible (the GX FWD starts at $20,695; the GT AWD is priced at $28,995).
Yes, it’ ll steal some sales away from the Mazda3 hatch, but the CX-3 is good enough at the ordinary everyday stuff to be a sales hit. People will buy this thing to slog through day-to-day traffic, the bumper-to-bumper bummer of the weekday commute. Driving pleasure is of no use here, but the CX-3’s other strengths are.
But as you battle stopand-go, grasp the wheel and wish for twistier roads, free from traffic. It’s what this car dreams of, late at night, alone in the garage.
The CX-3 boogies like a Miata wearing a backpack