hey Alan, i might be in the market for a new car and someone told me you'd be a good guy to talk to...
just wondering what your thoughts are on the mazda3 series? they pay your mortgage too? 
I dont have much exposure to Mazda3's since majority of the public \"thinks\" a newer car must be serviced by a dealership or no warranty. This is not the case though.
Anyhow they appear to be decent cars. The thing I find about Madza cars with \"auto\" is that hey really cook the automatic transmission fluid quickly. Toyota's are also hard on the ATF.
A friend of mine has a mazda 3 and she gets excellent gas mileage. I do however notice that the newer mazda's are making thing more compact inthe engine area and make it more difficult for mechanics to do engine maintenance. This is the case for many makes now but typically I find Nissan's have always been making things more compilicated so more $$$$ to fix when things go wrong. Mazda's have been kinda bad too for making things harder to fix. Ask any mechanic how fun it is to change and EGR valve on a 4 banger precidia MX3 or even a stupid fuel filter change!!!
The average JOE that doesn't do major repairs on their own vehicle will not notice these things but will notice some cars will remove money out of the wallet quicker for the same type of service.
I can do an oil change with a BCAA 25point inspection for about 60 bucks. That same service in a honda service \"A\" is somewhere in the $130 range.
Cars are money pits. Choose wisely so the money pitt wont empty the wallet quickly.
Be warned that you get what you pay for. Buy an inexpensive sunfire and you'll know what I mean. Run low on fuel one day and your fuel pump will DIE. That'll cost you a good $700+ bucks and I've done a good 7 or so just this year from BCAA tow ins. If you dont change you oil frequently statistically those bottom ends of the engine will destruct in 180,000 - 200,000 km. Also ask tranny builders how many trannies they rebuild for those cars. I haven't even mentioned when the \"check engine\" light goes on for other reasons. That car is cheap in initial purchase but will pay for my morgage and a tranny's shop owners morgage.
Nissans are notorious for timing chain tensioner problems. I hate those cars with a passion and if you talk to alot of other mechanics I'd say most will agree. Hard to fix and is brutal on patience. Mitsubishi's tend to have computer problems and look on the road and you'll see many do burn oil even with under 100,000km's. Those are nightmare to fix aswell because the engineers must have been smoking crak when they designed it.
I must say that statistically all of my customers with honda's and toyota's have the lowest in maintenance and the least towins from breakdown. If majority of my customers owned those cars I'd be living in a Smithrite garbage container fully equipped with TV and dvd player
