2021 Mazda MAZDA3 Reviews, Pricing & Specs

After the redesigned 2019 model year Mazda3 debuted, it won the prestigious World Car Design of the Year and Canadian Car of the Year awards for 2020. It’s not hard to see why. It’s alluring bodywork styling simultaneously reflects drama and sophistication, daring and refinement.

Naturally, the 4-door sedan is the more conservative version of the car. The 5-door Mazda3 hatchback, badged as the Mazda3 Sport, adopts a comparatively pugilistic stance, its lidded stare, minimalistic greenhouse, and short overhangs giving it an aggressive, forward-leaning appearance. Sadly, the hatchback was not the version of the new 2021 Mazda3 2.5 Turbo that we tested. But the sedan offered plenty to entertain the eye and the soul.

Sitting atop a newly expanded 2021 Mazda3 lineup, the 2.5 Turbo comes in both body styles, includes all-wheel drive (AWD), either standard, with the Premium Package, or as the 100th Anniversary special edition. The base price is $34,881 Canadian for the least expensive sedan, and $35,881 for a hatchback with the Premium Package. Our test car, the sedan, had Premium Package and extra-cost Machine Gray Metallic paint, bringing the pricing to $36,881 (Canadian, estimated; all prices include MSRP plus a $1,750 destination charge and other fees).

Interior colour and upholstery choices depend on trim level and body style. In standard specification, both the hatchback and sedan offer black or greige leatherette. The sedan offers black or white leather interior finishes at the GT grade, while the hatch is available with black leather only. Both models can incorporate red leather when ordered in the 100th Anniversary grade.

Our Mazda3 Turbo test car’s white leather looked and smelled terrific, though rumour has it that dark blue jeans can ruin their appearance in a hurry. Nevertheless, the resulting high-contrast two-tone interior easily supports Mazda’s efforts to move its brand into premium territory. In addition to the leather, the Mazda3 exhibits close attention to design detail, deft execution of bright metallic accents, and one of the clearest and most legible sets of gauges in a modern automobile.

Quality is pervasive, despite the substantial use of hard plastic to trim the lower half of the cabin. Design is paramount, as evidenced by how the asymmetrical Mazda Connect infotainment system melts into the dashboard. And the driver takes centre stage, the entire cabin revolving around the person who is in control of the car.

If anyone doubts that a Mazda3 is a legitimate entry-luxury car, have them check out a 2.5 Turbo interior.

This is where the Mazda3 Turbo story gets good, and before we address the heart of the car, know that aside from the drivetrain, Mazda made only a couple of tweaks to the standard suspension when compared to a normally aspirated Mazda3.

You might be familiar with Mazda’s turbocharged 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine, which is available in the Mazda6, CX-5, CX-9, and soon, the CX-30. As is true for those applications, if you fill the tank with 93-octane fuel, the Mazda3 Turbo makes 250 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 320 pound-feet of torque at 2,500 rpm. Use 87-octane gas in the 2.5-litre turbo, and the figures are 227 hp at 5,000 rpm and 310 lb-ft at 2,000 rpm.

You can get a Mazda3 Premium Hatchback with a six-speed manual transmission, but not a Mazda3 Turbo. Mazda pairs the more powerful engine with a 6-speed automatic transmission with both Sport and Manual modes. It feeds the power to a next-generation version of the automaker’s i-Activ AWD system, which Mazda says can deliver three times the amount of motive force to the car’s rear wheels than previous iterations of i-Activ, improving the Mazda3’s corner-exit capability. Non-turbo Mazda3s can be equipped with either AWD or front-wheel drive (FWD).

Given that the turbocharged powertrain adds no more than 120 pounds to the Mazda3, yet it supplies 64 extra horsepower (at 1,000 lower rpm) and 134 added lb-ft of torque (at 1,500 lower rpm), well, you can guess the impact on performance.

It is transformative.

Mazda tunes this application of the powertrain specifically to the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo, striving to attain engine and transmission response that is as smooth, predictable, and consistent as possible. Based on our experience, the company achieves this goal, delivering stunning speed without any of the freneticism of a typical high-powered compact car.

Select Sport mode, and it adjusts the transmission for more precise and direct shifts. Simultaneously, it tweaks the G-Vectoring Control Plus (GVC+) software to produce improved turn-in when cornering by downshifting the transmission as the driver brakes during the approach to a corner or curve. This action eliminates unnecessary shifts in the middle of the corner that could make the car feel unsettled or slow to respond when accelerating past an apex, resulting in a more natural driving character on a twisty road.

All 2021 Mazda3 models get improved steering feel and response, and the 2.5 Turbo uses stiffer front suspension springs and dampers to handle the added weight over the car’s nose. It is beyond sporty. The brakes are identical to non-turbo Mazda3 models, and the Turbo sits on 18-inch alloy wheels wrapped in 215/45 all-season tires.

Believe it or not, the car doesn’t need stickier tires. As it sits, the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo is delicately calibrated for maximum driving pleasure. Not even the torsion beam rear axle suspension detracts from the number of smiles you’ll wear driving this car.

It's not a Mazdaspeed3, but on our testing loop, the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo begged us to drive it at extra-legal speeds. Enhanced by the car’s speakers, the engine note is a delight, and both the powertrain and dynamic tuning meet every one of its engineers’ goals in terms of smoothness, consistency, and predictability. It drives as though the car anticipates exactly what you want, and exactly when you want it.

As a result, this is a car a driver comes to know and trust. Understanding how the Mazda3 Turbo is going to behave and trusting that it will respond to a situation in the manner you’ve come to expect makes it much easier to enjoy. You learn where the limits are, and the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo never moves the goalposts on you.

Of course, exploring this car’s potential elevates your heart rate, narrows your focus, and forces payment of intense attention. That’s all a part of the fun. And we’re almost speechless to describe the reward.

Turning to a more practical matter, we must report that during our test drive the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo averaged 11.5 litres per 100 kilometres, falling well short of the Natural Resources Canada estimate of 8.8 L/100 km in combined driving. However, this result is reflective more of how we drove the car than any abject failure of the powertrain. Most likely, given our experience with other turbocharged Mazdas, you’ll get on the high side of the 9s in the real world.

Lined in leather and equipped with heated front seats and a heated steering wheel, the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo feels and smells like a luxury car. However, it lacks a few important details that could help to truly elevate it to premium status.

When Mazda says this car’s cabin is driver-focused, it’s not kidding. While the driver’s seat offers 10-way power adjustment, the front passenger’s seat does without. Neither front seat offers ventilation, and rear-seat passengers suffer more than cramped accommodations. Air conditioning vents and USB charging ports are missing from the back seat.

In-cabin storage is adequate, but no more. You’ll find enough space for the small personal items you regularly carry with you.

Trunk space is competitive with other compact sedans, measuring 374 litres. If you really want a fun car with plenty of utility, get the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo hatchback. It provides 569 litres behind its rear seats, and 1,334 litres with them folded down.

Mazda Connect is the name of the company’s infotainment system, and it combines an 8.8-inch display with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as well as Bluetooth.

But, because Mazda wants to limit driver distraction, the infotainment screen is not touch-sensitive. Unfortunately, this choice serves to magnify just how terrible Mazda Connect’s voice-recognition technology is. When asked about the system’s failure to accurately respond to any of my standard test prompts (except for “Find the nearest Starbucks”), a Mazda spokesperson explained that most people will issue voice commands through their smartphone’s digital assistant while running Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

We’re not buying it. If Mazda is not going to offer a touchscreen, then its embedded voice recognition had better be on par with Siri, Hey Google, or the systems in the cars the company targets as competition.

Beyond this, we couldn’t figure out how to change radio stations or skip through my favourite pre-sets without using the centre console control knob and going through the Entertainment menu. The steering-wheel and centre-console controls that looked like they should perform this function instead activated a music replay feature.

More than any of this car’s few flaws, it is Mazda Connect that causes the most irritation.

Mazda pairs the infotainment system to a 12-speaker Bose premium audio system. It includes Audio Pilot road noise reduction, and to further improve sound quality the automaker has taken steps to remove noise, vibration, and harshness at the frequency ranges most relevant to human perception. Also, Mazda says the speakers are arranged like a home audio entertainment system might be.

To its credit, the Bose system sounds better than most wearing the brand and at this price point. But the key is to listen to FLAC files for the best audio quality. While listening to satellite radio, Bob Marley and The Wailers caused the rear deck subwoofer to suffer serious flatulence.

An Active Driving Display, or head-up display (HUD), is included in the Premium Package on the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo, and it remains visible when the driver is wearing polarized sunglasses. It’s quite useful, showing current speed, the posted speed limit, and safety technology status including blind spot monitoring.

Mazda says its safety philosophy is that technology should support the driver, not replace the driver. As such, the company’s collection of advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) is designed to keep the driver engaged and, in the absence of action, step in to try to prevent a collision.

The list of ADAS is a long one, and you can configure various warning types and sensitivity levels using the settings menu in the infotainment system. In addition to increasingly common features and functions, the adaptive cruise control supplies stop-and-go capability and the GT trim upgrades the automatic high beam headlights to provide an Adaptive Front Lighting System, which helps the driver to see around corners and curves.

With the Premium Package, the Mazda3 Turbo is equipped with a few safety features that are exclusive to the GT model. In addition to a high-definition surround-view camera and front and rear parking sensors, the new features are low-speed reverse automatic braking and Traffic Jam Assist.

Mazda is clear that Traffic Jam Assist is not a Level 2 ADAS. The driver is always in control of the steering. Rather, this technology adds a lane-centring assistance function when the adaptive cruise control is set. It works at speeds under 65 kilometres per hour, and it uses the stop-and-go function to manage speed in heavy traffic.

Overall, Mazda does a great job with these ADAS systems, which operate in a smooth and sophisticated manner, meaning the driver is more likely to use it than to turn it off.

In terms of safety ratings, the Mazda3 excels in crash tests. In National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) testing, the car earns top five-star ratings in every assessment including for rollover resistance, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has carried over the Mazda3’s “Top Safety Pick+” rating from 2020.

Slowly but surely, Mazda is moving upscale into premium territory. Better yet, the company appears to understand that if the product does not support the positioning, Mazda will lack credibility and the attempt will fail. And that means, as Mazda is in the middle of its transformation, you’re getting more than you’re paying for.

Based on our experience with the new 2021 Mazda3 2.5 Turbo, the car can legitimately target vehicles such as the Audi A3 and Mercedes-Benz A-Class. Even the BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe and Mercedes CLA-Class are not far out of reach. From this perspective, the Mazda is a genuine bargain, offering far more performance and equipment at a lower price.

However, people buy luxury cars as much for the cachet of the brand than the actual substance behind it. For now, Mazda still struggles in this regard, and its lofty $30,000-and-higher price tag could be viewed as folly by consumers who don’t know how to measure the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo’s true value.

But, even for skeptics, all it takes is one drive in a turbocharged Mazda3 for you to realize it is worth every penny.

Note: Images show a US model.