[aidenn0]

I only wish you could get the 2.5L in a manual with no moonroof. That would probably get me to buy a new car.

I have an 07 Mazdaspeed3 that is getting long-in-the-tooth, and it gets terrible mileage (19 in town, high 20s on the freeway). The best I can say about the shifter is that you get used to it.

I don't think I need quite as much pep as my current car (plus all current hatchbacks that are comparable performance are north of $30k), and the 2.5L engine in the Mazda3 is nice.

I like the Mazda3 better than the Focus, but if I had to get a car today it would probably be the Focus ST.

[thenewwazoo]

For what it's worth, I went from a WRX to a 2L 3i and don't miss the extra horsepower because we felt, frankly, that they're all slow, so why pay a premium for slightly less slow? With that said, it's plenty fast enough for city driving and is the most fun FWD drive car I've driven, bar none. Hell, it's the best car I've owned and only barely not the most fun (after my RX-7). The interior is great, it's cheap to run, ...

[aidenn0]

There are some dangerously short freeway on-ramps where I live, so "slightly-less-slow" can mean a few extra feet between me and a tractor-trailer.

[coherentpony]

Austin?

[sokoloff]

I don't think I've ever seen so many comically/dangerously short on-ramps as in Pennsylvania.

[aidenn0]

Oh, parts of PA are quite bad, though it's been a while since I drove there. Come to Southern California where there are all sorts of on/off ramps that are only on a single side of the freeway and have 90-degree turns followed by essentially zero merge area onto a 65MPH speedlimit.