Need help with next car

[TD Charlie]

My 2008 Honda civic has finally let go. Hated the car and will never believe anyone about how great and reliable they are. Looking for a commuter car. 2015-2018 under 80000km. What are the better cars that will last? I drive about 100km a day.

soooo what’s the verdict?

 

[kicksavedave]

A Mazda3 would be the same size as a Civic, is supposed to be far more enjoyable to drive than similar Japanese cars and more feature rich as well. I've heard that in the 3rd gen (2014-18ish), the reliability improved greatly. It's cheaper than a Corolla with similar mileage/year it seems so it's the one I'm looking at.

I was initially gonna go with a 2014/15 Elantra but a Mazda3 with the same mileage/year is only around $1K more expensive than an Elantra so why not. Only thing is that I haven't yet test driven one cos of Covid lol so maybe I won't even like it, I don't know.

I'll second the Mazda 3, but I had the 2017 S Grand Touring with the 185 hp engine (the lower models have 155 hp.). It was super fun to drive and handles well, just very good small car with enough sporty handling and acceleration. The top of the line S Grand Touring was fully loaded - adaptive cruise control is a must for long highway drives, auto rain wipers, auto high beams, heated steering wheel (in Canada you should want this). I paid about $25K for it brand new in 2017.

Zoom zoom indeed. I've had a Civic and a Hyundai Elantra, the Mazda 3 dominates both of them in terms of fun to drive.

 

[Roboturner913]

I have a 2015 Mazda3 2.5 GT, 6-speed manual with every option. It is a fantastic car. Very fun to drive. The engine is good, 185 HP/185 torque is plenty in a car this size. It doesn't understeer like a typical FWD car and the engine is way more torquey and lives lower in the power band than most modern Japanese cars.

But it's the suspension and steering that really makes the car fun. It's set up perfectly. You get ALL the grip, all the time, and I don't even have really nice tires on it yet.

I only have two complaints, and they're sort of connected: road noise at highway speeds and 6th gear isn't tall enough. At 70-75 mph it's spinning at close to 3000 RPMs. I feel like you should be able to cruise at 2200-2300. Having said that, I still got 35 MPG on my last road trip. As for the road noise, I've got a couple rolls of Dynamat that will fix that problem.

 

[TaLoN]

At 70-75 mph it's spinning at close to 3000 RPMs. I feel like you should be able to cruise at 2200-2300.

That's pretty typical for an engine of that power/torque.

You want something that runs lower in 6th, you want something that is going to have a bit less power on the low end.

My old 2004 Hyundai Tiburon was pretty much the exact same setup - 186hp, 180 ft lbs of torque, at 70-75 freeway speeds in 6th? 3k rpms.

If you want lower rpms, you want either a bigger engine with more power, or sacrifice the low end torque.

Only so many ways you can mix it up.

My 2012 Shelby GT500 on the other hand, 550hp, 510 ft lbs of torque, cruises at 75 at only 1500 rpms.
My 2015 Audi S4, 333hp, 325 ft lbs of torque, cruises at 75 around 2700 rpms

In the end, on a engine of that size/power... if you want it to be fun to drive/have good acceleration, you're going to sacrifice the efficiency at highway cruising speeds. You can't have both.

 

[Roboturner913]

I don't think it necessarily has to be that way, though. I don't need immediate throttle response in 6th gear at 75 mph; I would just downshift. But I guess they have to set these things up to be dummyproof.

It's a very minor complaint at any rate; if I really needed a big highway cruiser I would have gotten a V6 Charger. I don't do long trips very often, I'm usually just bombing around town.

 

[TaLoN]

I don't think it necessarily has to be that way, though. I don't need immediate throttle response in 6th gear at 75 mph; I would just downshift. But I guess they have to set these things up to be dummyproof.

It's a very minor complaint at any rate; if I really needed a big highway cruiser I would have gotten a V6 Charger. I don't do long trips very often, I'm usually just bombing around town.

Except, 6th gear is NOT setup for immediate throttle response. It's an overdrive gear, meaning it's ratio is less than 1.0:1.

6th gear performance though, is affected by the engine setup. A engine setup to give power in a certain band range, will require certain gears to deliver certain rpms for proper performance levels.

If you gear it outside that performance band, you're efficiency drops through the floor, and thus you will actually lose fuel economy.

Lower rpms doesn't mean less fuel or more efficient if your engine isn't setup to run within those rpms very well.

Engineers have setup the engine for performance at the low end, that means you will need to operate in a certain range for proper engine performance and efficiency in each gear... including your overdrive gear for fuel efficiency reasons.

It's actually BAD for your engine/ transmission, to do any significant acceleration in 6th gear. It's simply not capable of it. If you need to accelerate significantly with a manual transmission, you must downshift from 6th before doing so. You can actually damage 6th gear over time if you don't.