My little car does pretty much all I need. It has carried 5 on a weekend trip to a beach house with all our stuff. It has enough power that I can safely merge onto the interstate with traffic at 60-70mph, and the reliability has been incredible. I've driven it just under 90,000 miles with no problems other than maintenance items. I do need to put on front struts (one is leaking a bit) but that's not bad for 8 years and all those miles. It's also fun; it handles better and feels better on the road than any other FWD car I've driven.

we like the equipment level, the fact that you get a lot for the money and that is it fun to drive. The car is very well made and the manual shifter is very precise. Overall it is a great car - this is our second Mazda 3 as we had a 2010 before this one.

See item 6 above. A car should reflect one's personality and this car does that for me. Also love the fact it is available with a traditional manual transmission which is very rare in North America now.

I like that it has plenty of space since I have moved a lot while owning this car. It's not a smooth ride at all in this car, though, and it sits really low to the ground. I think this is something that makes the car affordable, but I think next time I buy a car I'll pay more attention to how smooth the ride is.

Excellent gas mileage, good engine, top in safety, relatively inexpensive, drives very well, comfortable not a lot of leg room in the back seat