Last Monday, I made an attempt at a daytrip up to Mt Buller for some snowboarding, something which I have done a few times before. This time however, the outcome was rather disastrous. I never made it to the snow, and my Mazda 3 ended up upside down about an hour north of Melbourne. I escaped with a few scratches on my hands and a sore neck and shoulders that would affect me until the end of the week. The Mazda 3 was not so lucky, and while it is still in the process of being assessed by the insurer, the people that have seen the car, or photos of, have unanimously agreed that it would be a write-off.
The Mazda 3 was a 2005 BK Series 1 Maxx Sport automatic hatchback in velocity red, and I purchased it about two and a half years ago with ~130k kms on the odometer. It was a pretty good car, and was approaching its 180k km service, before last Monday’s event. Now that it was no longer drivable, I needed a replacement; the inconvenience of not having a car was too great, especially since I need to drive to get to work. I actually had been having occasional thoughts about replacing the Mazda 3 for a while now, with an AWD vehicle, to reduce the need to put on snow chains as well as the improved handling, and pretty much the only suitable vehicle was a Subaru Impreza; the replacement has just happened a lot sooner than planned. There really isn’t any other option out there in the small/mid-sized segment of the market with AWD, a hatch body, and isn’t out of my budget. If it wasn’t for the AWD requirement, another Mazda 3 would’ve have been very likely.
So on Monday afternoon, after I had been dropped off back home by a friend who graciously made the 1hr plus journey to pick me up, and I had sorted my stuff out, I hopped into carsales to look at my options and make a few enquiries. On Tuesday morning, I made a 2hr public transport journey (see, I told you not having a car was damn inconvenient) out to test drive one of the cars I had selected. After the test drive, I negotiated with the dealer, went to the bank to write up a cheque, and there I was, the owner of a 2008 Subaru Impreza RS G3 MY09 automatic hatchback in black with 125k kms on the clock.
Compared to the 3, the Impreza definitely has a different feel to it. Due to the front wheel drive of the 3, it feels like you’re being pulled along, whereas the AWD of the Impreza sort of carries you along with the car. Handling wise, the Impreza loses the zoom zoom, zippy feel of the 3, but feels a bit more steady and sure of itself, at the expense of also feeling slightly heavier, which it is. Throttle response is also slightly more sluggish, comparatively, and I feel that the power comes on at slightly higher revs in the Impreza than it does in the 3.
The direction of the manual shifter will take getting used to, being pulling back for downshift and pushing forward for upshift, which is the opposite to the 3. The Impreza feels like it has slightly less interior storage space, with smaller glovebox and centre storage compartments; to be fair, the glovebox on the 3 was pretty damn deep. My centre console storage lid doesn’t actually lock close either, but it’s not something that I think I’ll bother to fix. The mirrors on the Impreza are bigger and the slight concave design gives me more confidence in seeing what’s around, while the bucket seats are quite nice.
I haven’t driven the car enough to have enough data regarding the actual fuel economy figures, but it should be in the ballpark of the 3, if not slightly more fuel hungry. Being black in colour, all sorts of dirt and dust show up on the paintwork, and I’ve pretty much resigned myself to having a permanently dirty car. I’ve had the car for just under a week now, and overall, I’m quite satisfied with it so far.
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