Your opinion of the Mazdaspeed3 depends on the cars you coveted in high school. Were they the European thoroughbreds, the ones with equal amounts of heritage and performance? Were they Detroit's finest, with rear tires as wide as their torque plateau? Or were they economy cars, the ones with 15-inch wheels shod in R-compound rubber for weekend autocross duties, the ones that constantly needed a bit of fiddling with a laptop plugged into an OBD-II port, the ones that had a stack of Sport Compact Car issues integrated as a load-bearing part of their frame? As it became most apparent during the 21,293 miles we logged on our Celestial Blue Mica example over the past 12 months -- a large number of which were spent with the front tires pulling slightly to the right -- the Mazdaspeed3 is unabashedly for fans of the last. Along with the torque steer, a topic discussed ad nauseam in these pages, staffers of various childhood car-tinkering backgrounds debated the merits of the shifter's balkiness, the clutch's on-off personality, the exhaust drone, and the onset of turbo boost that felt like being rear-ended by an out-of-control school bus.
To the grown-up tuners, these character traits evoked memories of the glory of high school, minus the essentially nonexistent reliability. That brace-for-launch acceleration followed by comical torque steer? It's like your buddy's second turbo project car -- you know, the one following the project you're not supposed to talk about anymore. The shifter and stiff clutch? Like your first custom short shifter and Stage 3 racing clutch. The exhaust drone? Inspired by every modified car, ever. It's like the good times, when all your car's various settings were dialed in perfectly and, for those brief 5 minutes, your car worked. You won your class at the weekend autocross. You finished a session of hot laps during the local track day without overheating. The 'speed3 gets nostalgia right. It reminds you only of these enjoyable memories, like when your favorite back road was deserted, and, while bombing down it, your car didn't explode into fiery bits like your buddy's first project. Oops, forgot we weren't talking about that.Motor Trend Rating:
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