Owning a high performance car sounds great until you actually try driving one around on a typical day. Where do you put the groceries? With the MazdaSpeed 3, you can get a very useful car that will suck the doors off of pretty much any other car.

First off, the MazdaSpeed 3 is based on your basic Mazda 3. It generally looks the same although there are some slight modifications to the body work. Still, the important thing to know is no highway patrolman is going to give you a second thought and that Porsche owner is going to groan when a little Mazda Hatchback smokes him off the line. With the MazdaSpeed 3, the car may look like a sheep, but it is really a wolf.

Living up to the motto of “vroom, vroom”, the powers that be at Mazda have taken the basic Mazda 3 package, crammed power under the hood and firmed up the suspension. The end result is a car that simply flies. We are talking zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds. The rims are expanded to 18 inches and the springs are stiffened up to give you a firm ride and responsive handling.

The transmission on the MazdaSpeed 3 is a bit funky at first. It is much more in the theme of a racing transmission than a compact car. Shifting can be clunky, primarily because the transmission is built to handle the high torque rates the car has. Once you get used to it, one major advantage is you can do no lift gear changes. As the name suggests, you need not take your foot off the gas pedal when changing gears. Just keep it floored and the car flying.

For handling purposes, the car borrows the slip differential system from the RX-8, which is not nearly as fun to drive as the Speed 3. The car also is designed to deal with the massive torque when turning by implementing a Super LSD software system that adjusts the acceleration instantaneously through the turn. This helps avoid situations where you feel like the steering wheel is being yanked out of your hands since the Speed 3 is a front wheel drive car.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the MazdaSpeed 3 is the price. You can pick them up for $22,000 to $23,000. With the current economic crisis, you can probably get them for a lot cheaper than that. Dollar for dollar, it is practically impossible to find another car that gives you so much performance. I highly suggest you head on down to the local Mazda dealer and give one a test drive.

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