Evolution of the Mazda3

I’m here driving the 2014 mazda 3 car that was 35 years to make the years 1977 and this is where the mazda3 started with the glc which stood for great little car greats relative but it was definitely a little in a car you have to remember in 1977 men got perms and wore polyester pants the corvette in 1977 had 180 horsepower that’s less than the new mazda 3 even

Though it doesn’t have much power the glc is incredibly lightweight and surprisingly nimble literally has the bones of an rx-7 this is what the rx-7 was built on and so you can really kind of feel that as you throw it into a corner as long as you’re going downhill you can feel the nimbleness and the balance in this car that you really wouldn’t expect from looking

At it i think that was the key to why this car was such a huge hit besides being fuel efficient reliable spacious for its size and flexible it was surprisingly fun to drive by the 80s of course the glc went front-wheel drive then a couple years later we went ahead and change the name to three to three so mazda decided they wanted to build a version to compete in

European group a rally and to do that they had to build a homologation car to qualify it as a production car that’s what this is a three to three gts turbocharged intercooled 1.6 liter twin cam engine four-wheel drive with a lockable center diff for when you get on snow or loose gravel and a suspension that can handle at least a couple of jumps it was a really

Brilliant car about 15 years ahead of its time by the late 90s we changed the name again this time we’re calling it the protege the protege was really built on the same fundamental architecture philosophy is the three independence droughts all around a nice rigid chassis and a really surprisingly nimble handling balance the team at must in north america saw the

Potential in a protege decided to build this special model the mazdaspeed protege putting key mounts more compact car called this is the best handling front drive car they’d ever driven nova wrote that i wrote that and then i went to work for mazda for 2003 the mazda3 name finally appeared and the new mazda3 was really a huge departure from the protege three to

Three before it it was a much bigger more mature or sort of well rounded car mazda 3 still had the nimble handling that the protege was known for we backed it up now with enough power to really support that handling may goes double for this car the mazdaspeed3 which had 263 horsepower an absolutely ridiculous 280 foot-pounds of torque the mazda 3 was an instant

Hit it was the fastest mazda ever to reach a million sale so the mark 2 mazda 3 carried over the body structure in the suspension from the mark 1 but we pulled ahead the sky into g engine that we were designing for the mark 3 mazda 3 and that engine gave us more power more torque and dramatically better fuel economy and since the old mazda 3 chassis was still so

Good even eight nine years into the production of the mazda 3 it was still winning almost every comparison test it was in the mark 1 was already in production when i started at mazda but i got to actually work on this car hey there’s been a lot of time on twisty mountain roads like this dialing and the handling the steering feel right really making sure the car

Was fun to drive i was really proud of the way this car turned out but it’s nothing compared to the new one we really have always made mazda threes handle brilliantly they’re really nimble really well-balanced really fun to drive but a big focus list to keep that strength but improve the everyday drivability and make it so that even in your commute to work you can

Feel this directness and this linearity the real intuitive driving response and at the same time when you do find yourself on a fun road like this the kind of road that we really tuned the car for you can just have a blast of the car while i was doing the chassis development on this car the steering and handling i was also working on our new infotainment system i

Really understand how important it is after your vision and your focus outside of the car so we put the screen really high on the dash directly in your field of view we put the commander down here so you can anchor your elbow and operate the commander you can operate it by feel with tactile feedback so you don’t have to look at the screen we put a heads-up display

Directly in front of the driver your speed your next turn on your navigation will pop-up where you can see it without taking your eyes off the road so in the end what we have here is a car with more power than a 1977 corvette and better fuel economy in the 1977 mazda glc you

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Evolution of the Mazda3 By Mazda Australia