Post by hjr on Sept 20, 2004 22:23:12 GMT -5
t a few years ago?
I say this because I went and tested Elantra, Spectra, Mazda3, and tC(which we purchased).
Only the tC was close to what I had expected for this pack of compacts.
Exampel: 1997 Protege DX(mazda)... mother in law has it and it has 80,000 miles. Car runs nice, is reasonably quiet, roomy, good with MPG, a nice ride overall. In fact, if they still sold these, and I did nto have cash for the Sonata, i'd get a protege.
It is that nice.
Now, we drove a mazda3, and it was Loud, Handling was nto good, seats were terrible, overall, a nice looking car, some nice little gizmos, liek controls for radio on sterring wheel, telescopic sterring column,etc, but that was it. I drove Neon when car was OOC a month back, and it was Better! hard to believe.
If this car were 13K(mazda3) yeah, I'd excuse the NVH problems.
Not at 16K+.
The Focus was a better car, and this mazda3 is supposedly based on it?
70's was a bad time for small/compacts, 80's to early 90 things improved, but since about 97-98, have been on the dwon slide, like less firewall insulation(to drowned out the noisey 4), or cheaper seating, or handling subpar to older compacts of just 7-8 years ago.
Is it "let's make this calls feel as cheap as the price, so that custiomers who can afford it, go up2-3 grand and buy a midsized car ?"(and make more cash?).
Seems so to me. The tC, only compaint is that the seat, wehn it is low, the belts tends to lay aginst the sideof my neck, so I gotta jack up the seat, then it is not as "relaxing", b ut it still beats the NVH of a mazda3, Neon, etc.
I hope theses companies soon return to making good compacts, not just throw soemthing together and hoep it sells, or to help out with their CAFE numbers only.
I say this because I went and tested Elantra, Spectra, Mazda3, and tC(which we purchased).
Only the tC was close to what I had expected for this pack of compacts.
Exampel: 1997 Protege DX(mazda)... mother in law has it and it has 80,000 miles. Car runs nice, is reasonably quiet, roomy, good with MPG, a nice ride overall. In fact, if they still sold these, and I did nto have cash for the Sonata, i'd get a protege.
It is that nice.
Now, we drove a mazda3, and it was Loud, Handling was nto good, seats were terrible, overall, a nice looking car, some nice little gizmos, liek controls for radio on sterring wheel, telescopic sterring column,etc, but that was it. I drove Neon when car was OOC a month back, and it was Better! hard to believe.
If this car were 13K(mazda3) yeah, I'd excuse the NVH problems.
Not at 16K+.
The Focus was a better car, and this mazda3 is supposedly based on it?
70's was a bad time for small/compacts, 80's to early 90 things improved, but since about 97-98, have been on the dwon slide, like less firewall insulation(to drowned out the noisey 4), or cheaper seating, or handling subpar to older compacts of just 7-8 years ago.
Is it "let's make this calls feel as cheap as the price, so that custiomers who can afford it, go up2-3 grand and buy a midsized car ?"(and make more cash?).
Seems so to me. The tC, only compaint is that the seat, wehn it is low, the belts tends to lay aginst the sideof my neck, so I gotta jack up the seat, then it is not as "relaxing", b ut it still beats the NVH of a mazda3, Neon, etc.
I hope theses companies soon return to making good compacts, not just throw soemthing together and hoep it sells, or to help out with their CAFE numbers only.