2.0 SE-L NAV 2WD

Don't go near it. Great idea but badly put together and supported

It is a nice car to drive if a little lacking in acceleration in the higher gears. It sticks to the road like glue if you throw it around bends. The ride is a little firm when long distance driving. The MPG of 35.9 is the average from new as recorded by the car. This is normal driving plus some play time. The driver’s seat feels a bit out of alignment to the steering wheel and peddles. This makes you feel if you are sitting at an angle to the direction of travel. The higher position and all round vision supported by well placed parking sensors makes it easy to drive both on the motorway and in town. It is deceptively spacious both for passengers’ and luggage making it great for the family. The centre console control unit does not add anything to the party as all the controls are duplicated on the dash, touch screen, steering wheel and voice control. The tech in the car is limited for the class. This may be a good thing given the problems.

Unfortunately it has been plagued by electrical faults from day one. The iStop was not working at delivery and took 4 visits to the dealership before it worked at all. Now it seems to have a mind of its own, as if the battery is not big enough to support the function in stop start traffic. The satnav live services have never worked fully. The satnav, voice control and radio failed resulting in the main display unit being replaced. The live services are still not working. Tom Tom attempted to directly reprogram the SD card via the home computer. This did not activate the services immediately. However after the car had been left standing for 2 weeks, all the services cam on for about a week and the disappeared again. Tom Tom now says it is a faulty card reader and the responsibility of Mazda. Mazda have been aware of the problem since December 12 but are no closer to finding a cause let alone a solution. They say it is not the card reader. Using the onboard phone function is difficult due to the amount of crackling on the line. The line is fine when the call is redirected to the handset.

The dealership has been of little help leaving me to do all the chasing and ringing around. Mazda UK sate the contract is with the dealership and therefore not their problem. The advice is to wait until they figure out a fix. Assuming the problem is the satnav and not the car. Given engineers have been sent over from Japan to look into the issue, I suspect there is a deeper problem here with this car.

I would love it if I had confidence that I was not going to be hit by big electrical bills once it was out of warranty or it would let me down when I needed it to work. If this did not bother me I would have bought second hand!

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