Not a good choice IMO, their motors are largely the reason why MazdaSpeed and the CX-7 are more or less deleted from the US market. That motor was their first mass produced DI engine WITH a turbo and boy did we pay a price on that. Even with a mostly strong maintenance history these engines do not respond well at all to neglect and suffered from LSPI quite often. I don’t recall them even coming back with a turbo based engine until the latest 3 came with it.
sauce: myself, I bought a first year new MazdaSpeed3 and datalogged the crap out of it.
Sounds like it’s been maintained well and engine/trans should last almost forever if you keep up with regular maintenance … honestly even the cosmetics don’t look bad for a $1,500 car
I’m about to check out a 2003 Accord EX on Monday with 130K miles listed at $4800.
Seems like a solid choice. My car got totaled two weeks ago and is the worst time to buy a car.
The sh*tty part is that the costs (vehicle, labor, & parts) combined on one of them “donks” equals to roughly a year of lease payments on one of the incentivized base WB HC Chargers on here (maybe more.)