Mazda MazdaSpeed3
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Text and photos by Cor Steenstra
We had experienced the Mazda Mazda3 already in July 2009, but the arrival of this MazdaSpeed3 version to us seems like the epitome of the flowing design language Mazda has been carefully sculpting under previous design director Laurens van den Acker. As you can clearly see in the pictures with this article, the flowing treatment has been applied everywhere, and not in a bad way at all, thankfully. It would have been so easy to go overboard and create something vulgar, but instead Mazda have been able to create something unique, very powerful, very in-your-face, and desirable.
The bold exterior addition are not just all show, but are well matched up with under-the-hood tuning that makes this a very nicely balanced boy-racer indeed. It is nimble, provides plenty of traction, excellent road holding, and although of course equipped with race-inspired suspension, it never becomes as uncomfortable and scary as we experienced in the tuned Suzuki recently. We found that we can point this MazdaSpeed3 to where we want to go, quickly, and it does the job! We took it freeway driving, and we took it on our famous Highway 74 through the mountains, and on both occasions it was perfect.
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