2008 MazdaSpeed 3

[R_Rambo]

alright well i did a search didnt find anything on this so sorry if this was a thread at somepoint. well my question is for those who owned this car whats you .02 cents on this? any problems? or is it just great? last night i drove one and loved it :wiggle:. but the new offers are coming out for december/end of the year so i didnt get the quote yet hopefully tommorow or thursday. and i guess i should look at a mazda3 forum anyone know of forums to look at to further my knowlede? thanks

[tdmopar59]

it reminds me a lot of the a3 and the gti's.... if you want to look at those too... but as far as forums just hit google and plenty of them will pop up....

[Eclipse GSX 61]

They were a lot of fun to drive. But your stuck with your POS so have fun.

[Snoozie]

I would honestly stay with your Impreza for as long as possible. I know its not as fast as you want it to be (trust me, I have the sohc 2.5), but its safe and super reliable. There are plenty of things you could do with it.

[WRXD]

I have an 07, its pretty much the same as an 08.

It is a lot of fun to drive. The aftermarket isn't as developed as a lot of other cars, they are less companies making positive forward steps. There is more arguing and debate among members on what is the 'best' way to mod the cars. The car is a bit overengineered in some respects which causes a lot of experienced tuners to scratch their heads. No speed3 has cracked 400 reliable wheel hp yet in 3 years of production, so if you are looking for big crazy power, this car isn't for you.

If you arent planning on modding the car its an awesome car and very quick in stock form. If you are planning on modding it, things get a bit more complicated.

The community is much much younger in general than the subie community, so I will let you draw your own conclusions from that.

check out Mazdas247.com and Mazdaspeedforums.org

There are 'problems' with any platform-- the speed3 has terrible factory motor mounts something that is an absolute must to upgrade even on a stock car. Some speed3s have problems with their turbos smoking on idle, which seems to be just due to the K04 they use. This issue has been fixed on many cars by putting in a catch can, using heavier oil or in extreme circumstances, getting replaced under warranty. Again, if you ask about any of these issues on a forum you will get 30 different remedies.

[R_Rambo]

I would honestly stay with your Impreza for as long as possible. I know its not as fast as you want it to be (trust me, I have the sohc 2.5), but its safe and super reliable. There are plenty of things you could do with it.


its kind of a weird situation the impreza is staying in the family pretty much the deal is that my mom needs a new car and she went out looking the other morning she comes home and says i wanna get an 08 impreza like yours. so im like uhhh well why not trade or ill sell it to you and ill get something else. imo i think its kinda dumb to have two of the same car even though they are great cars. so i was out looking last night for something close to what i paid for mine and the place i went to really wants to get rid of the MS3 since it there last one and i may get a hella deal on it.

[oneslowxa]

had mine for about 8 months 11k on it

i would upgrade the motor mount and shifter bushings as soon as possible.

clicked a 13.8, 13.9 with a cai...

overall a fun car to drive. but you need to turn traction off or your car cuts power everywhere straights twisties etc...

fit and finish is way nicer then anything in the low 20's range, best bang for the buck if you ask me.

The only real problem i had was the silicone shifter bushing got caught jammed up after drag racing it a few times and minor cowl rattle when it's retarded cold out...

car is a pain to extract more power out of it. the usual mods don't work without a ton of reinforcing mods since the ecu adapts way too quickly...

"Slow in fast out" due to torque steer, this car is somewhat nimble in slow speed turns, but can handle really well in the 50's - 100 range on FLAT surfaces.

please check your insurance rates for this car before you take the plunge.
my gf who is 25 and has great credit was quoted ~900 a month lol

it's 138 for me... in philly

good luck with the purchase. what were they offering you for yours?

[garrettej8]

I'm almost at 14,000 miles and I got my 08 in april of this year. it's a blast to drive in the twisties, just be sure to have proper tire pressures. I've installed rear motor mount inserts, which in my opinion helped with the wheel hop a little, but I am going to replace the whole mount with a solid piece eventually. I could care less about the vibrations. I also installed a COBB short ram intake which is one of the cheapest and best mods you can do to the car. I just got a streetunit test-pipe, which replaces the second cat, in the mail and will be installing that soon. hopefully the car is a bit louder at wide open thottle. right now it sounds like a vacuum cleaner because of the restriction. I also bought some shifter bushings to replace the stock rubber ones. I'm probably going to stick with COBB for most of my future mods because of their accessport.

but anyway, enough about mods. the car drives pretty decent, there are just a few things that really bug me.

for one, the car has what seems like "emotions" and what I mean by that is that sometimes the car will pull crazy hard and other times it just doesn't feel as fast. as someone previously mentioned, the ECU is very complicated and everything from the steering angle, ambient temperature, and throttle position play a huge part in this. I've just recently tried to gradually mash the gas pedal and it seems to be doing the trick. also, in first to third gear, the boost is limited to prevent a bunch of wheelspin which seems to be a good thing. the torque can overwhelm the tires pretty easily. apparently the accessport disables this.

also, the car runs extremely rich. you will notice right away when you look at your exhaust tip. it gets black within hours after you clean it. this isn't necessarily a bad thing however, because the car is direct injection. this only happened to me once, but I tried to floor it in 6th gear once and a big puff of black smoke came out, kind of like a diesel. it was hilarious because the guy that was riding my ass on the highway backed off lol.

there is a very annoying crackling or rattle sound that comes from the cowl on the bottom of the windshield when it's cold out (below 50 or so)
this can be fixed under warranty but I'm too lazy to take it to the dealer. there is also a TSB out for the 07-08 models for having a squeaky seat belt buckle. you'll go over an uneven surface and it will just annoy the hell out of you. you can squirt some wd40 or something in there and that'll solve it, but it's a problem with the washer which is behind the bolt that holds it down.

what else....

aside from all those little problems it's a great car and I'm still glad I made the decision based on the price.