Here is a real Q car: the
Mazda 3 MPS is ideal if you want a car that looks very ordinary, not to say a little boring, yet goes like stink. And I mean really like stink, thanks to an amazing turbo engine which develops 260 bhp. That means you can rush up to 60 mph in 6 seconds, and you get a top speed of 155 mph. That makes it the fastest of the European hot hatches.
Actually, on the road, the car is quicker than those figures suggest thanks to hardly any turbo lag and good ratios. Acceleration anywhere from 30-70 mph is very, very quick.
Looks a dull hatch
Yet when you look at the Mazda 3 MPS, you think it is just one more rather dull hatch, tall and practical. Look closer, and you can see that the wheels are bigger than normal, and the tires have low profiles – they are 215/45 R18 tires sitting on quite attractive alloy wheels.
The interior impresses straight away as well. You get a neat instrument cluster with a central speedo, and quite large rev-counter and minor instruments in three circular dials. The numerals are orange on black background, which is very clear at all times.
One oddity is that the 180 mph speedo – it really goes that high – is set so that at about 160 mph the needle is vertical, so that you are always looking in the bottom left quadrant unless you are on a race track. Not ideal, but the clarity compensates.
Good driving position
Also, the seats give a good driving position and provide good lateral support. The pedals and footrest are made from fashionable aluminum, with lightening holes, but are not arranged for easy heel-and-toe work, which is a pity.
Out on the road, the Mazda 3 MPS impresses immediately, thanks to the smoothness of the engine, the quiet cruising, and the precision of the six-speed gear shift. On the other hand, the ride is typical for a hot hatch with conventional strut front suspension – hard with a lot of shaking about.
The wheels appear to be in contact with the road, gripping well, but this is an illusion. In fact, if you keep your eye on the instruments you see that the traction control had to come into operation regularly on poor road surfaces in the lower gears as one wheel starts to lose adhesion.
Electrifying acceleration
Acceleration is electrifying, as you would expect with a 2.3liter engine that pushes out 260 bhp at 5,500 rpm, with 280 lb ft (380 Nm) at 3,000 rpm – an advance over the 225 bhp at 6,100 rpm, and 236 lb ft (320 Nm) at 1,600 rpm of the Ford Focus ST. In practice, this is a real point and squirt engine, because you put your foot down, and then need to shift up almost straight away. The result is that you shift gear a lot more when driving fast than you would a naturally aspirated engine which revs to 8,000 rpm or so.
The first time you overtake and boot the throttle you get a shock - as you pull out, so the car veers off to the offside kerb. To keep control, you need to hold on to the wheel and correct this exuberance.
After some energetic driving, especially on wet roads, you find that this Mazda 3 MPS has a mind of its own. There is so much power going through the front wheels that so long at the engine is spinning at 3,500 rpm or more, a firm jab at the loud pedal gets the car veering off – very sharply. Torque steer is the problem.
Torque steer makes for exciting driving
In fact, you can think you are going straight, but the slightest bit of lock is enough to to send the car off line. Torque steer is usually caused by unequal length drive shafts, but in this case it is probably caused by the limited slip diff, which stops the slip, but as the tire grips causes the car to veer off.
It is quite exhilarating to start with, making you feel you are driving a more powerful car than you, but after a while it gets a bit boring. In theory, you should be able to use it to your advantage, turning the power on sharply just before the apex so that the car turns in. In practice, you need to enter the corner slower than you really want to make this work, and could be dodgy if you were really tramping on.
Why have gone on at length about this? Because this torque steer is what dominates the driving experience.
Turns in well
But what about the handling? Otherwise, that hard ride and all the electronics pay off. The car handles well, turning in well for a front-drive car, and cornering with little roll. The stability control limits understeer so you can drive surprisingly fast round twisty roads, carrying plenty of speed through the bends, feeling the g-force, but not rolling much.
For best results, you brake or lift off late, turning in immediately you come off the brakes in which case the understeer does not get a chance to build up, unless you are going very fast indeed.
If you press hard and progressively through a long curve, the understeer builds up, and the characteristics are very similar whether the stability control is on or off – a good thing.
Lift off is very gentle, and unlike the Focus ST, which wants to wag its tail, the Mazda 3 MPS does not seem inclined to do so.
Overall, this is the ideal car if you want a very high level of practical performance in a spacious hatch, which does not excite attention. The engine is terrific, developing stacks of power whenever you want giving superb point and squirt take off. It will also trundle along at 1,000 rpm in sixth gear very smoothly, and will do anything you want in between. Just superb.
On the other hand, though, the Mazda 3 MPS is clearly slightly over the limit for the amount of power that can be taken through the front wheels without a lot of electronic interference. A pity it does not share the four-wheel drive system of the Mazda 6 MPS, which would make this a better road car.
Like most modern cars, the Mazda 3 MPS is well overweight at 3,266 lb (1,483 kg), 366 lb (166 kg) heavier than the Focus ST, which has a similar platform and a five-cylinder engine.
