I picked it up Tuesday afternoon. It won't be as easy to spot in parking lots as the ol' Solar Yellow, but I'll be happy to not have to fill up the gas tank every 3 or 4 days. Hehe. Here come the dreaded driveway shots.





It's a Mazda3 5dr in Titanium Gray with the ABS/SAB/SAC and Moonroof/6CD option packages.

I also wanted to mention that I will be attending at least one more of the In N Out gatherings to give my Thor-mod'd deflector to Huey. That being the case, I have some other stuff that people may or may not be interested in having like the step rails, gear basket, cargo area protector (the vinyl mat thing, not the rubber organizer), used/faded Wet Okole seatcovers ("School Bus" yellow inserts), the shade insert for under the sunroof, SWXC rock sliders, and a Sony CDX-F5700 CD/MP3 receiver that still has the wiring harness and mounting kit attached. I may also have an unused recovery strap, but I'll have to ask my brother if he wants it first.

Keep in mind that some of that stuff may be specific for 2000 (and maybe 2001) models. Most likely, I'll be giving away everything for free except the stereo (since I only had it installed for a month) and the rock sliders (since they're the most expensive item and were hardly used at all). If none of the locals speaks for any of the items, I'll move them to the For Sale forum.

BTW, regarding the rock sliders, don't bother asking me to ship them somewhere because, at least for the time being, it isn't going to happen. I want to be 100% sure that they fit (ie: the holes match up) the truck in question, so that means I'll either have to bring them to you or you can come by my home and we'll test fit. I was lucky in that I didn't have to bore out the holes in order to get them to fit properly on my truck, but I've already had big problems trying on 2 other 2000s.

Nice Ride!

Very nice looking.
So, how often do you have to fill up now? Every 5-6 days? :p

I had fun "testing" the Mazda 3 at last years Mazda Rev It up. Its an impressive car little car thats very affordable, practical and fun. Good choice!

I just sent you a PM about your sliders.

Ahahaha...smart guy. I was being kind when I said I was refilling every 3 or 4 days - it actually averaged to just over 3 days. Hehe. If the numbers are true, I'll be refilling maybe once every 7 or 8 days.

P.S. I sent PM replies back to those who had sent ones to me.

Nice ride...

i like the looks of the new mazda's... dont know much about them in detail though..

is it a nice sporty ride? or do they numb it down?

If "pretty stiff suspension" equates to "nice sporty ride," then the answer to your question is "yes." There isn't a whole lot of sway in this car. I admit to taking the offramp from southbound 101 to Lawrence Expressway without slowing down and I haven't heard any complaints from the tires. I can definitely feel every bump in 101, too. Hehe.

One has to take into consideration that over the past 17 years I have driven an 87 Toyota P/U, 89 Nissan Pathfinder, and 00 Xterra, so relatively speaking, the 3 handles like a sports car to me.

Sweet. Yeah, try taking the Lawrence to NB101 onramp at 45mph. That'll wake up those tires!

I like Mazda's new look. Last year I was close to buying a 6s. The 3 is a sweet-looking ride. The problem is... the car begs you to lay on the go-pedal. Heavy go-pedal and good gas mileage are mutually exclusive, even in a sport compact.

This is me in a "3" at Revitup last year. Fun car!! Especially with Falken tires around an autocross track.

I had a surprisingly quiet couple of hours here at work, so I crunched the gas numbers I had kept for my Xterra. I missed a couple of fill-ups, but I have numbers covering 53,206 of the 53,861 miles.

53,206 miles
3422.86 gallons of gas ($6343.27)
-------
15.54 mpg

I'm wondering if I should be surprised by that number considering 80-85% of my driving was on the highway and I was usually at 70mph-or-below and didn't race from light-to-light in the city, plus it's not like I had a whole lot of add-on parts, either. I never even once cracked 18 mpg on a single tank. There was a noticeable dropoff in mpg and I'm wondering if that was when I replaced the factory Long Trails with the ATs. I didn't record the date in my log, so I'll have to look at the original receipt from where I got them. I *think* it coincides.

OTOH, I just filled up my Mz3's tank for the first time before I came to work and I went 315 miles on 10.3 gallons, which comes out to 30.6 mpg. You can imagine how large of a smile I had while I was working the numbers in my head.