Hey guys, as you can tell by my post count I'm new to this forum. I was looking to spend under $10K on a used car because I wanted something I could have paid off within a year. I was actually looking at used Lexus IS300's. Then an old college room mate told me to check out the Mazda 3. After test driving numerous of both models I finally realized I actually liked everything about the mazda 3 hatchback better then the IS300. Granted, I never did find a manual IS300 which I was dead set on manual trans but those things are virtually impossible to find! So when driving the 3 manual back to back with the auto IS300 I realized the power difference wasn't really much seat of the pants. The mazda was cheaper and well once I convinced myself mentally that not buying a Lexus because I actually liked the mazda better I was good with it.
So... All that said... Here's pics of the car I should be picking up this weekend.
The car has 86K on it and is $7500. It's the 2.3 non turbo which is cool with me. I want something that's reliable and gets good milage more then something to race with. I have a dirt bike and a truck to get the speed demon urges dealt with.
The price is considerably less then any other car out there. I'm actually just paying off the remainder of the owners loan straight to the bank. He purchased it new.
It is lowered a little and that had me worried that it was possibly driven hard. Looking underneath, no signs of scraping or slamming ditches. I popped the hood... I'm VERY mechanicaly inclined. No hardware had signs of ever being removed as if the engine had been modded and put back to stock. The owner said he'd seen one around town dropped and really liked the look so he did his. That's the only mod this car has.
Sooooo... All that said, I'm going to look it over really close one last time before buying and take it on one more test drive. Anything known issues I should look for on these cars? Any known quirks I should be checking out?
I did a search before posting this with a couple different key words cause I'm sure this has been asked a million times already but I came up empty with the search results.
Thanks!
Khris
Oh and just for comparison, this is my other home built project/toy that it'll be sharing the driveway with... Kinda opposite end of the spectrum! LOL
So... All that said... Here's pics of the car I should be picking up this weekend.


The car has 86K on it and is $7500. It's the 2.3 non turbo which is cool with me. I want something that's reliable and gets good milage more then something to race with. I have a dirt bike and a truck to get the speed demon urges dealt with.
The price is considerably less then any other car out there. I'm actually just paying off the remainder of the owners loan straight to the bank. He purchased it new.
It is lowered a little and that had me worried that it was possibly driven hard. Looking underneath, no signs of scraping or slamming ditches. I popped the hood... I'm VERY mechanicaly inclined. No hardware had signs of ever being removed as if the engine had been modded and put back to stock. The owner said he'd seen one around town dropped and really liked the look so he did his. That's the only mod this car has.
Sooooo... All that said, I'm going to look it over really close one last time before buying and take it on one more test drive. Anything known issues I should look for on these cars? Any known quirks I should be checking out?
I did a search before posting this with a couple different key words cause I'm sure this has been asked a million times already but I came up empty with the search results.
Thanks!
Khris
Oh and just for comparison, this is my other home built project/toy that it'll be sharing the driveway with... Kinda opposite end of the spectrum! LOL


