But back seat room? C'mon. It's almost +2 tight. We could not get comfortable seated 'behind ourselves'. And the notion of adding a third anything between us would have been pretty laughable.
I don't know if I totally agree with that...the wife and I have several times ridden long-distances in the back of the in-laws' CX-3. My father-in-law is 6'2" and I have no difficulty at 5'8 sitting behind him. Granted, I'm not the tallest one out there, but my mother-in-law also doesn't have to move her seat forward so that my wife can sit behind her. It's plenty spacious for 4, though the ingress is a little bit more difficult than it should be.
I do agree that a third person in the back would be very squishy, and not in a good way.
The only real miss in the interior is the lack of a centre armrest (there’s a pair of cupholders there instead), and it’s also worth noting that the CX-3’s pleasing exterior style comes at the cost of somewhat restricted outward visibility, especially rearward.
Another gotcha is the lack of retained accessory power: it’s bad enough that your music shuts off when you stop the CX-3’s engine, but I didn’t expect it to cut my Bluetooth phone connection mid-sentence.
Interesting. My 2010 Mazda 3 has retained power (granted, with the GX I don't have Bluetooth to test same - but the charger continues to work even with the key removed and driver's door opened - literally never turns off), but yes, GM does it best when it comes to retained accessory power - only cuts the power when the driver's door is opened - I hate how Lexus cuts the power as soon as ANY door is opened (so if my wife opens the passenger door before the moonroof is closed, for example, it'll stop mid-way and I have to turn the car back to "on" (not the engine) just to close it fully).
GT models include AWD as standard, but with fine weather for the duration of my test drive I didn’t get a chance to test it out.
When the in-laws snow-birded last year, I drove their CX-3 around on Xi3s in some gnarly snow. It was fantastic and didn't struggle anywhere. Crazy-fun-happy-turns were difficult because traction was so aplenty. Coming from a Forester, I would not be left wanting for traction in a Mazda AWD product.
I left my test car in normal mode most of the time, netting me an impressive mixed-driving fuel consumption of 7.3 L/100 km over the week (my worst economy was 13.6 L/100km during some exclusively city driving in Sport mode). Official fuel consumption figures for the CX-3 are 8.8 / 7.5 L/100km city/hwy, and my test car was showing a long term average of 8.8 L/100 km on its trip computer when I picked it up.
Seems about right...I didn't find it to be hella fuel efficient, but it is fairly decent.
My only real beefs with the car are the horrid outward visibility and the lack of the driver's armrest. The HUD is amazing, by the way. Not the nicest out there, but it works very well.
