1.5D 105ps Sport Nav 5dr Hatchback

Nice enough car until you need to deal with the dealerships

Plus points: smart looking, well equipped, great seats, good to drive, economical to fuel - getting around 60mpg in varied driving on winter tyres; was nearer 70 on the supplied tyres (winter ones are actually quieter though).

Downsides: infotainment could be so much better with a few tweaks; nav is pretty dire (with local knowledge I ignored it and it re-routed taking 30 minutes off the ETA). Can't manage the recommended service interval without needing an oil change. Couple of rattles from infotainment and B pillars.

Dealer service (having used three different dealers across two franchises) has been universally awful. They appear to be ridiculously understaffed judged by how difficult they are to get hold of and how slow to respond to requests to return calls.

Other than routine maintenance, a recall for the diesel engine speed issue, and the well-documented aircon compressor failure, the car remained reliable until recently.

The car started suffering a juddering and loss of power lasting perhaps 10 seconds each time, after which the Engine Management Light would come on. Went to dealer for a recall and they said the software update might resolve it. It didn't.

This continued until the next service. Was told they couldn't do anything as the fault didn't occur at the time. From this I assume they didn't even check the computer for fault codes.

By this stage I had, quite by chance, worked out that it would happen when the car was coming out of one of its own DF regen processes. About a month after its most recent service, it logged a PDF fault (Particulate Matter in DPF) and went into limp mode. This was coupled with myriad errors from a seemingly random selection of any of the following active safety systems: Traction Control/ESP; Autonomous Braking, Lane Departure Warning, Tyre Pressure Monitoring.

Mazda Assistance sent out a recovery truck. The guy plugged in his computer and cleared two fault codes relating to injectors on cylinders 1 and 2.

The car was booked into my nearest dealer. So far it's been with them for 13 business days and will be for at least one more day.

First of all it refused to communicate with the dealer's computer. Once that was resolved following intervention from Mazda UK, Europe and Japan, the car is now being fixed with a new DPF and all four injectors being replaced. Thankfully this is a warranty job as it's going to be about £3,000 once it's finished.

The car has covered 34,000 miles is used regularly for journeys of a good 45 minutes/30 miles as well as some shorter journeys so I feel the DPF shouldn't be suffering in this way.

The customer services team at Mazda UK have been better to deal with than the dealers and have kept me mobile with the use of a hire car from Enterprise for two and a half weeks so far. However, when I suggested they might like to buy the car off me for the outstanding finance so I could be rid of it, they fobbed me off.

A really not bad car in other respects, but this one massive issue and the dealership backup (or lack of) has completely put me off ever owning a Mazda again. This is a shame as the forthcoming Skyactiv X engine sounds like it could be amazing.

As soon as the car is fixed, it's being part-exchanged (at a considerable financial loss to myself)

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