A Car Reborn

3 Years ago I bought a brand new 2005 Mazda 3 Five Door. It was based on the Protege models and so had been in development for a while. In Japan and overseas they are marketed as The Axela. For the most part I have been very happy with the car, but it had one huge flaw. The wheels.

The 3 model series is considered a "sports cars", and with a 2.3 liter engine in a smaller package, the car does go very well. The 17" low profile wheels looked good, but limited the options available for tires. Specifically there were no decent all weather tires. The car came with Goodyear Eagle GT tires, which were probably the worst tires I have ever had on a vehicle. They lasted less than 20,000 miles and literally shredded off of the steel cables with a fair amount of tread left. I replaced them with Falken tires, which were a little better, but not much.

Even though I faithfully rotated the tires from front to back every oil change the wear was still much more profound on the front tires. Above is the tread left on one of the front tires. Below is one of the rears.

Now this is more like it. I went and bought some 16" wheels which opened up my tire selection greatly. It was also fully approved by Mazda, as the little sticker on the door of the car says that this size wheel and tire combination is approved for use on the car. As you can see in the pic below the tires have a much more weather oriented tread pattern. So far I have not noticed a real handling difference. The roads around here are covered with gravel and this combination handles that well. We also had a little bit of snow the other day and I was having fun trying to get the car to have issues. It has been transformed.

Here is a side view which shows the wheels. All in all I think that the looks of the car have improved as well. I know that I have talked to other 3 owners and we used to refer to our cars as "sit and spins" in rain and snow. Not anymore, well worth the investment.