The fourth-generation Mazda 3 is getting some small changes for its second year on the market. For 2020, Mazda is adding its i-Activsense driver-assist features to all sedan models; these features were previously standard on the sedan's higher trim levels and all hatchback models. The base 2020 Mazda 3 sedan now includes blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, and automatic emergency braking; this brings it in line with rivals such as the Honda Civicand Toyota Corolla, which also include active-safety features as standard across the board.

Prices rise accordingly, with the base 3 sedan going up $500 to a starting price of $22,420. The one-step-up 3 sedan in its Select trim level goes up $100 and now starts at $23,620, while the base hatchback goes up $1000 to $24,620. All other trim levels hold the line on pricing compared with 2019, and all-wheel drive remains a $1400 option on all but the base sedan trim. The sole engine remains a 2.5-liter inline-four mated with either front- or all-wheel drive and either a six-speed automatic or a six-speed manual transmission (offered only on the 3 hatchback in Premium trim). There's still no word on when the anticipated Skyactiv-X compression-ignition-capable enginewill arrive in the U.S.
Mazda also says that it has changed the wheel finish on the Premium trim level, although it hasn't yet released photos of what the updated wheels look like. 2020 Mazda 3 sedan models go on sale this month, while 2020 hatchback models will be available starting in September.

Mazda Motorsports has finally found some success with its DPI program in the IMSA series, and is following that up with the addition of a new factory-supported racer for the 2020 season. Like all good compact car manufacturers with a motorsport program, Mazda is finally jumping into the deep end of the TCR pool to fight against the likes of Audi, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Alfa Romeo, and Honda.

The new Mazda 3 TCR is homologated to run in any of 36 TCR classes around the world, including the FIA’s WTCR. For now, the car will make its on-track debut in the 2020 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR class early next year with the four-hour race to kick off the Rolex 24 at Daytona weekend.

In my opinion, this car has made the most graceful transition from street car to TCR spec racer. Mazda’s signature Kodo design language lends itself well to giant badass fender flares, Volk Racing Wheels, a subtle lowering, and a significant aero package. This is a proper touring car design that I genuinely hope translates into a sporty hot hatch version of the 3 for the street

How great would it be if Mazda brought something to showrooms to take on the Veloster N and Golf GTI?

In keeping with TCR rules, the Mazda 3 TCR features a turbocharged 4-cylinder race-spec engine producing about 350 horsepower. Long Road Racing, which also partners with Mazda to produce the Global MX-5 Cup cars, built a bespoke paddle-shift six-speed transmission to put the power down to the front wheels.

Mazda Motorsports has withheld pricing information for now, but TCR classed cars are cost-capped to 130,000€, so expect the price to fall somewhere in there. This TCR-classed monster will clearly be quite a bit quicker around the track than the Global MX-5 Cup cars, and quite a bit less quick than Mazda’s factory-effort RT24P prototype. If those are the three rungs of your motorsport program ladder, however, they’re pretty strong rungs to have.

We’ll see what how it performs on-track in January. For now, enjoy these totally rad photos of the racer.

Inside the new Mazda 3 is a button. This button activates and deactivates the i-Activsense suite of safety technologies, and I’m sat in the driver’s seat wondering where it all went wrong.

I haven’t crashed, but the realisation is crashing: this is a far, far better car with the safety systems turned off. I’ve just driven a week’s worth of mileage, often moving from urban streets to dual carriageways, motorways and back again before a country road stint later in the week. Overall I covered about 600 miles over the seven days.


The first couple of planetary rotations were marred by the car’s constant fussing, whether it was red-backed steering warnings on the dashboard when I strayed within about six miles of the edge of my lane, the assortment of ‘no-you-don’t’ beeps and unwanted steering nudges if the car mistakes overbanding or old white lines for the real thing, or even the forced power cuts when you pull into a motorway gap close behind the car that just passed you, accelerating you helplessly towards the onrushing car behind instead of allowing you to build speed and control the gaps fore and aft.

Man, the relief after I turned it all off was tangible. I relaxed and felt like I could finally enjoy the car. The clean, stylish interior is first on the list. A simple, confidently shaped dashboard and matching – but also clever – digital instrument cluster give a premium impression from the off. There are enough buttons but not too many, while the iDrive/MMI-style rotary dial interface is a dream. Crucially, too, there aren’t a million sub-menus here like there are in German cars. It’s really easy to get a hang of. The Mazda’s might just be the most user-friendly arrangement of controls I’ve come across.
Fire up the spark-controlled compression ignition SkyActiv-X 2.0-litre petrol engine – the real reason we’re testing this car – and there’s a gruff, dieselish response as it settles into tickover. Pull away and it’s more of the same; if I wasn’t so sure I was driving a new kind of petrol engine I’d have to check it wasn’t a diesel by noting the rev-counter redline and then sniffing inside the fuel filler.

I was paying attention at this point and noticed how early the upshift indicator was appearing. Sometimes you don’t even get to 1500rpm before the light winks on and tells you to grab another cog or two – the 3 is all about block-shifting where it can, and will happily send the engine back to 1100rpm or less to do it. Amazingly, the engine will actually pull from such low number – albeit with a grumble.
Mazda made claims of diesel-like torque for the SkyActiv-X unit (we have also reviewed a Mazda 3 with a more conventional petrol engine). It doesn’t come across that way because of the gearing involved – second passes 60mph – but I’d have to say I think it’s an accurate boast. If second only did 45mph like on most diesels, the engine would feel as torquey as a modest four-cylinder diesel. As it is, it still pulls its gears pretty impressively for a non-turbo petrol engine. It’s just a shame that there are trim rattles throughout the dashboard, doors and B-pillars that are directly triggered by the engine speeds the car wants you to stay at.

Up at the top of the rev range is a proper N/A petrol top-end. It starts to build before 5000rpm but really kicks in after that point, finding a deep well of power reminiscent of VTEC up to the 6300rpm-ish redline. Sadly the gearing – particularly from second to third – makes it impossible to stay in the power and there’s a lull while the revs rebuild, but above 5000rpm the Mazda is a quick, engaging car. It doesn’t make a thrilling noise but it gets a move on.

You won’t be disappointed with the supple, stable handling, either, if you put some better tyres on. Darting, accurate steering outmatches the surprisingly lacklustre Toyo Proxes R51A hoops that push into understeer far too quickly in wet and damp conditions. A set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4s would transform it; likewise the Continental PremiumContact 6 or the best from Goodyear and Bridgestone.

Whichever rubber is fitted the car has an outstanding suspension tune, brilliantly soaking up B-road bumps and undulations while keeping the body stable, inspiring confidence in what it’s capable of. Get on the throttle after the apex and it will tense and pull itself around neatly without crashing over further bumps. And there’s no sport button! This is just a delightfully well-sorted driver’s car that works for commuting just as well as it deals with choppy back-roads. In an age where car makers want to force you to pay more for adjustable and adaptive suspension that never seems quite right in any mode, Mazda is leading the way in how it should be done.
As an engineering example the SkyActiv-X engine is a marvel. On one traffic-free journey during the week, going no higher than 63mph or so, I managed an indicated 64mpg over 35 miles. That’s astonishing. Careful gap-management in traffic meant I was able to secure low-50s even on the busiest of commutes. The efficiency potential is there, no doubt about it.

I love the totality of the stop-start integration, too. Come to a stop, shift to neutral ahead of time and lift off the clutch; the engine cuts thanks to a mild hybrid system. Then the same tech restarts the engine with such smoothness and speed that it can afford to leave the restart until the very latest point: either when you begin to lift the clutch to the bite point or, if your foot is still on the brake when you engage first, only when you lift off the brake. It’s marvellous.
One other thing: the 3 may be an all-new car but it has a CD player. This is good news, not just for me because I’m old, grumpy and still don’t get on with the quality of streamed music (only two of these are fact), but also for any streamers who suddenly discover how much fuller and richer tunes sound from CDs. You’re welcome, etc.

As I sit back and sum up my days in the 3, I give it full credit for achieving such a mighty feat. To pair such impressive economy with a chassis this good and a 6000rpm+ top end worth chasing is something no one has done before, to the best of my knowledge. Massive respect to Mazda, whose only major failing here is a wildly overzealous application of safety gizmos. I’ve got a few more miles to do and that magic button can stay in the ‘off’ setting.

Mazda and its SkyActiv-X engine have been making wonders for the Japanese automaker. Not only that it combines the efficiency of diesel engines with the power and refinement of gasoline mills, but the all-new SkyActiv engine has also been met with great demand in the European market.According to Mazda Europe CEO Yasuhiro Aoyama in a report by Automotive News Europe, the demand for the SkyActiv-X engine is higher than what they expected.

Since we launched the engine, we are seeing a very encouraging feedback: 60 percent of the orders for the Mazda3 are currently for cars equipped with the Skyactiv-X engine, as well as 45 percent of orders for the Mazda CX-30 crossover," .

Aoyama's claim of the apparent demand for the SkyActiv-X came only after a few months of offering the engine to the European market. The SkyActiv-X engine became available on the Mazda3 from September of this year, while the all-new CX-30 compact crossover (gallery above) was launched in October, also with the SkyActiv-X engine.

The question now is: when will the U.S. get this all-new powertrain from Mazda? To recall, the U.S.-spec Mazda3 came with a multitude of engine options, except for the SkyActiv-X. The incoming CX-30 won't have this engine as well as it would be exclusively available with a naturally-aspirated 2.5L SkyActiv-G mill. Worse, it has been confirmed that the SkyActiv-X won't be coming to the U.S. soil anytime soon.

The SkyActiv-X engine is currently offered in Japan and in European markets. Mazda decided to roll out the complex engine in phases, presumably to test the waters and to check if there's going to be a demand for this relatively-new engine technology. Now with this report of high demand coming in, we hope Mazda considers increasing its pace to deliver the SkyActiv-X to the rest of the world.

Driver assists can help make our trips much safer, but integrating software decisions into the control of a vehicle could cause serious problems if the system glitches at the wrong time. According to Mazda, a "Incorrect programming" in its Smart Braking System (SBS) can make fourth-generation Mazda3 vehicles to falsely detect an object in their path while driving and automatically apply the brakes while driving. The problem affects 35,390 2019 and 2020 model year cars in the US, but Mazda says it is not aware of any injuries or deaths as a result of the defect.

If the issue occurs, the driver will notice because their car has suddenly stopped, and also as an alarm sounds and a message is displayed on the in-car warning screen. Some Reddit posters report experiencing situations of the system activating while driving with nothing around, and note that while the system can be disabled, it appears to re-enable itself every time the car starts.

Autoblog reports that while some vehicles will simply need to have the system updated or reprogrammed, certain cars with early build dates might need to have their entire instrument cluster replaced or reprogrammed. It's a scary issue, but we've seen Mazda update its cars software to deal with real-life bugs, and the newly-redesigned Mazda3 has already seen a recall to make sure its wheels don't fall off.

Hopefully they get this issue taken care of quickly -- notifications will go out to owners by mail by February 17th next year, or they can contact the automaker for more information -- especially as automatic emergency braking is becoming a commonly-installed feature. Automakers including Mazda have committed to having systems for most cars and trucks by 2022, and a recent update from NHTSA shows most of them are well on their way.

Explaining new car sales can be tricky sometimes but there are certain times when the data should be pretty self-explanatory. When a car has been on the market for several years without a major refresh, sales will typically drop. Conversely, a car that was just redesigned should see an uptick in sales. So what the heck is happening with the 2020 Mazda3 sedan and 2020 Mazda3 hatchback?

Mazda's compact sedan and hatchback were all new for 2019 but if you look at the sales numbers for 2019, they are down a staggering 21.5 percent. The Japanese automaker just revealed its sales figures for January 2020, a month where 23,621 vehicles were delivered. This is a 17.8 percent increase compared to January of 2019 but the news still isn't good for the Mazda3.

Of those 23,621 sales, the Mazda3 (in both sedan and hatchback form) only accounted for 2,496 of them. To put this in perspective, the CX-5 crossover (Mazda's best-seller) moved 12,908 units, which was an increase of 21.2 percent compared to 2019 even with no major changes for the 2020 model. Mazda3 sales have now plummeted by 45.7 percent compared to January 2019 when the model sold 4,596 units. It might be easy to explain that Mazda buyers simply prefer crossovers but even the Mazda6 sedan, which is now several years older than the Mazda3, saw an uptick of 8.4 percent for the month of January.

These Mazda3 sales are tough to explain because, by all accounts, it is a great car and one of the freshest models in Mazda's lineup. It debuted with sexy new styling, a premium interior, and the addition of all-wheel-drive for the first time ever. The Mazda3 and Subaru Impreza are now the only non-premium compact sedans to offer AWD, but perhaps shoppers who are looking for this feature have all migrated to crossovers.

The all-new Mazda CX-30 managed to sell 2,368 units in January, topping the model's sales in all of 2019 when it sold 868 units (having just hit dealerships in December). Crossover sales could partially explain the drop in popularity but we think there is another issue holding the Mazda3 back - it needs a performance version.

Crossovers have taken over the mainstream market, that seems pretty obvious by now. But enthusiasts still prefer sedans and hatchbacks, so the Mazda3 just needs more power to appeal to those buyers. With 186 horsepower on tap, the Mazda3 isn't sluggish but we feel it needs a faster version with improved brakes and suspension. Even if such a model does not use the MazdaSpeed name, we think it could help draw a sub-section of buyers away from crossovers.