The IT Nerd

The interior of the Mazda3 Sport GS is simple, but very functional and driver focused. Let me show you what I mean.

The front seats are manually adjustable in six ways. they are comfortable, well bolstered, and the cloth that Mazda used is on the grippy side so that if you want to toss the car around on a back road with no police, you will stay in place. The front seats are heated.

The controls for the mirrors, door locks and windows are on the drivers side door handle. note the faux carbon fibre trim.

To the right of that is the button to disable the traction control.

Below that are the controls to open the gas cap flap and to pop the hood. You’ll also note that there’s a dead pedal that comes in handy for long drives.

The steering wheel is leather wrapped and has redundant controls for the infotainment system along with the cruise control.

The gauge cluster is very cool looking in the dark. The right hand side can be customized to show the info that you want to see.

The touchscreen sits on top of the dash. It doesn’t swivel nor does it move up or down like it would in some cars. Below that are HVAC controls and a cubby that not only contains the CD player, but gives you a place to put an item such as your phone. Note the leather wrapped shifter and parking brake. Both with red stitching.

Here you see the  HMI (Human-Machine Interface) Commander Switch. It doesn’t take long to get used to it and it is handy for controlling the radio, navigation system or even the phone. Behind it are two cupholders that are at different heights. The rear one is for smaller coffees while the front one fits my Venti sized Starbucks coffee just fine.

You get a deep centre console storage area with a sliding tray to hold change and in my case my proximity card to get in and out of my parking garage. Plus you can see the two USB connections, SD card slot, 1/8″ inch jack and 12V outlet.

You get a decent sized glove box.

Plus a place to put your sunglasses.

The back seats have decent amounts of headroom and legroom and the seats were comfortable. Though there is a hump in the middle seat that may make the person sitting in the middle seat uncomfortable. I would say that the middle seat is for emergency use only or for use with kids or those with short legs.

If you don’t need to seat a third person, you can use this handy flip down section which has a pair of cupholders.

The rear cargo area has a good amount of space and I like the fact that there’s a rubber mat covering the floor. If you need more space, the seats fold down (60/40 split) to accommodate large objects. One thing to point out is that the seats fold almost perfectly flat. Another thing to note is the lift over height is very low which you will find to be handy. The privacy cover is also handy.

And to provide some perspective in regards to the available space, here’s the usual shot of our groceries in the back of the Mazda3 Sport GS.

There’s a handle on the hatch that allows you to close the hatch without getting your hands dirty.

All the surfaces that you touch are soft. Plus the fit and finish is good. Everything that the driver could possibly need falls easily to hand. In short, everything interior wise is well thought through. I really have no complaints about the interior at all.

In part four of this review, I will cover the technology in the car. Watch out for it tomorrow.

This entry was posted on June 25, 2014 at 7:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.