RE: Spotted: Mazda 3 MPS
Discussion
Caulkhead said:
You need to look at the bigger picture. I pay £460 to tax my 6 MPS yet overall it's relatively cheap to run for a 4WD car of this performance. Every service I've had has been below £200, I pay £220 for fully comp with business use and in 4.5 years of ownership I haven't had a single repair, not even a bulb gone. I get 28mpg average and 30+ on a run.
Individual costs are irrelevant, it's the total cost per mile that matters.
PS - to the guy who mentioned de-badging one, don't bother. Hardly anyone has a clue what it is with or without badges!
I used to pay £460 when I had my Monaro, and i'd do it again for the right car, i just don't think i could do it for one of these.Individual costs are irrelevant, it's the total cost per mile that matters.
PS - to the guy who mentioned de-badging one, don't bother. Hardly anyone has a clue what it is with or without badges!
kambites said:
carinaman said:
I resent giving a penny more than I have to in tax when 70% of the pump price goes to the Treasury.
Even with that attitude though, road tax pales into insignificance next to fuel economy if you do many miles. I think the other thing that winds me up about that £400 per year road tax is the nonsense of the dates. 23 March 2006? A car of the same model registered the week before or the week after pollutes to the same extent if they're driven the same way, one is just a lot more to tax than the others.
I'd have a 6MPS, just one registered before 23 March 2006. They're saloons only but the rear seat backs do fold down I am led to believe.
kambites said:
From what I remember, the rear seats on the MPS do not fold down. There is a big chassis brace in the way.
Thank you. I could have well misremembered. That's a bind, it's useful to be able poke all sorts of stuff through folded down rear seats otherwise it has to be strapped to roof bars, and then you have the worry about leaving the car in M-way service car parks out of sight while you use the facilities.
There's a 6 MPS that parks opposite my house sometimes, nicely proportioned car but one I couldn't justify. I'll stick with my J plate E34 525i into which I've put an M60 4.0 V8 and 6 cog box. Tax is £215 and I get 400 miles from a full tank. It's set me back a damn site less than 6k too!
e28525e said:
There's a 6 MPS that parks opposite my house sometimes, nicely proportioned car but one I couldn't justify. I'll stick with my J plate E34 525i into which I've put an M60 4.0 V8 and 6 cog box. Tax is £215 and I get 400 miles from a full tank. It's set me back a damn site less than 6k too!
Iang84 said:
Terzo123 said:
Is it the 3 or the 6 MPS which gets whacked with the big £400+ annual road tax?
My work mate has the 3mps and that is definatley in the £400+ bracket (£460 iirc) when he last taxed itHad mine for 7 months and have grown to appreciate it. Great motorway tool (4th & 5th gear acceleration is staggering), although very thirsty. Not so good on twisties as doesn't inspire confidence and 0-60 is irrelevant, as in focus rs, as can't get the power down (4wd from 6 would have been nice, so could ditch torgue limiter in 1st, 2nd & 3rd). Dealer fitted crap tyres on mine and had wheelspin in 4th the other day on a wet road! If you want bhp on a limited budget though, look no further. Have only seen two others on road, but both drivers were 60+. Still pondering over BBR upgrade.....
Megaflow said:
Which makes you wondered if Mazda missed a trick. If they had trimmed the boost a touch and brought it down to 250bhp, for example, or maybe fitted stop/start, or some other trick to bring the co2 down to 225gm/km from the current 231gm/km, would it have sold better?
That's exactly what they did for the Mk2 one, it's in the lower tax band. They also gave a it a stupid smiley face grill which I just couldn't live with!I bought a red one for £4300 after being stopped three times in one week and thrown over my bonnet by a local duty sergeant (the toddlers were in the car as well...!). The officer mistook a Ducati launching off the lights which he didn't see just heard and thought it was me. My old car was a very low modified s line audi a4 the Mazda keeps them all guessing and blends in.
I have done the scoobies, evo's, tvr route among other cars. The speed I like to drive it used to cause me lots of issues. The only thing I have changed is a full adjustable coilover setup to sharpen up the handling. The standard setup used to be too soft at high speed for my liking makes a huge difference now
Aftermarket parts are difficult to find in the UK there is a lot more available in the USA but that comes at a cost.
The other reason for buying the car is due to them being uncommon compared to all the other usual brands I have owned so it's nice to follow the crowd. Having said that I don't see much of anything nice or different on the roads much these days.
I have done the scoobies, evo's, tvr route among other cars. The speed I like to drive it used to cause me lots of issues. The only thing I have changed is a full adjustable coilover setup to sharpen up the handling. The standard setup used to be too soft at high speed for my liking makes a huge difference now
Aftermarket parts are difficult to find in the UK there is a lot more available in the USA but that comes at a cost.
The other reason for buying the car is due to them being uncommon compared to all the other usual brands I have owned so it's nice to follow the crowd. Having said that I don't see much of anything nice or different on the roads much these days.
carinaman said:
kambites said:
From what I remember, the rear seats on the MPS do not fold down. There is a big chassis brace in the way.
Thank you. I could have well misremembered. That's a bind, it's useful to be able poke all sorts of stuff through folded down rear seats otherwise it has to be strapped to roof bars, and then you have the worry about leaving the car in M-way service car parks out of sight while you use the facilities.
Caulkhead said:
carinaman said:
kambites said:
From what I remember, the rear seats on the MPS do not fold down. There is a big chassis brace in the way.
Thank you. I could have well misremembered. That's a bind, it's useful to be able poke all sorts of stuff through folded down rear seats otherwise it has to be strapped to roof bars, and then you have the worry about leaving the car in M-way service car parks out of sight while you use the facilities.
Thank you Caulkhead. Didn't they do a 2.3 litre NA 4x4 Estate?
Edited by carinaman on Tuesday 23 October 13:16
I was always amazed when cars did just a smidge over the 225 limit for company car tax - very silly considering you could tweak to meet the limit. Remember one of the reasons I got an Astra VXR company car was its 224g - making the company car tax affordable, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth it.
No doubt explains a little more why the Mazda is as rare a beast as it is!
No doubt explains a little more why the Mazda is as rare a beast as it is!
Numeric said:
I was always amazed when cars did just a smidge over the 225 limit for company car tax - very silly considering you could tweak to meet the limit. Remember one of the reasons I got an Astra VXR company car was its 224g - making the company car tax affordable, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth it.
No doubt explains a little more why the Mazda is as rare a beast as it is!
Is it really worth tweaking a car just to bring it under an obscure UK-only tax threshold? No doubt explains a little more why the Mazda is as rare a beast as it is!
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff