2010 Mazda3 Five-Door Grand Touring

Mazda’s been on the right track with its Mazda3 for some time, and despite minor quibbles about its new mug, the refreshed 2010 Mazda3 continues to be one of our favorite small cars. We’ve already driven and tested the new Mazda3 sedan, and we recently had a chance to get behind the wheel of its five-door hatchback sibling in both manual and automatic flavors.

Our 2010 Mazda3 Grand Touring tester’s 2.5L four-banger, which makes a healthy 167 hp at 6000 rpm and 168 lb-ft of torque, is powerful, smooth, and sufficient enough to tackle a variety of urban environments. It scoots along easily with the standard six-speed manual gearbox onboard (a five-speed auto can be had too). We found it most powerful above the 4000-rpm mark.

Holding the revamped 2.5L at higher than 4K is probably not the best way to hit the factory-claimed 21 mpg city/29 mpg highway rating (22 city/29 highway with five-speed automatic). But despite putting our foot in it we recorded fuel mileage figures nearly equal to the EPA ratings during our stint behind the wheel. The sedan’s more miserly 2.0L four-cylinder can’t be had in the hatchback, so five-door buyers will have to make do with the more powerful mill.

Like the sedan we tested last year, the Mazda3 hatch’s updated chassis setup sports bigger underbody braces, a revised steering calibration and sport tuned suspension. The result is a taut, yet compliant and well-planted ride that’s refined enough for pothole-filled metro lanes and silky Interstates. While turn-in is quick, it exhibits some pesky understeer when the going gets twisty. But attacking corners isn’t what this car’s about. Leave it to the new Mazdaspeed3 to satisfy that desire.

We recently took the 3 hatch to the test track, where it scooted to 60 mph in respectable 7.5 sec -- a tick faster than the slightly lighter, 2.5L-equipped sedan (3027 lb vs. 3068) we tested. The five-door hit the quarter mile in 15.8 sec at 87.8 mph, the same time we got for the four-door. The hatch was slightly faster around our figure eight, taking 27.2 sec at 0.62 g average to complete the course, while still achieving a fairly impressive for the segment 0.87g lateral acceleration average.