Reviews

Some styling tweaks smooth out Mazda3 design for 2012. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press) From an old 323 hatchback I used to own to the first Protegé press car I got my hands on as a journalist, getting behind the wheel of a little Mazda has always been something I've looked forward to.

The same goes for today's Mazda3 lineup. From the base Mazda3 GX with its better-than-average 148 horsepower to the awe-inspiring turbocharged 263 horsepower Mazdaspeed3, and the 167 horsepower Mazda3 GT in between, compact Mazdas are a force to be reckoned with. I've lived with them in the quagmire of stop-and-go city traffic, driven them hard on curving back roads and stretched their legs on fast-paced freeways. I've even flung them through the cones on autocross courses and better yet, spiraled down the corkscrew at California's famed Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, a track that you might have noticed is sponsored by this sport-oriented Japanese brand

All Mazda3s like corners, and the new 2012 Sport GS-SKY is no exception. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

and therefore bears its name. After eight years of testing the Mazda3 I've never once been disappointed. And now comes the oddly named Mazda3 GS-SKY.

Why SKY? I understood when Mazda came out with the 2002 Protegé MP3: It was one of the first cars to boast a stereo with then-new MP3 playback technology. When I tested the 2003 Mazdaspeed Protegé its name made sense too: It was fast. Calling the hatchback a 5-Door in the U.S. and a Sport in Canada? I never think it's a smart marketing move to confuse Canadian customers with different names when they're sure to be bombarded with the huge advertising bleed from U.S. TV stations,

All this fun and it's good on gas too! (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

but I've got to agree with Mazda Canada, the 5-Door is definitely sporty. But SKY makes about as much sense in shortened form as its longer SKYACTIV name does. The engine cover is blue, depicting a blue sky I suppose, as is the cool blue interior backlighting, previously red. And the engine runs cleaner which should help keep the sky blue. It gets more power than base too, which must be why they chose the ACTIV portion of the name. The lack of an "E"? Maybe the naming committee was sitting around an Ikea Effectiv conference table when lightning struck?

What SKYACTIV isn't, is the auto industry's longest acronym, thank goodness. It's also not a hybrid. Rather, it's a combination of performance and fuel-economy enhancing technologies that stay true to Mazda's core value of

SKYACTIV badges set this super-efficient Mazda3 apart. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

performance-oriented driving. Yah, who cares what they're calling it, I'm buying in. Here's a list of what makes the Mazda3 GS-SKY different from its siblings: 1) The SKYACTIV-G direct-injection 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine with a high 12:1 compression ratio, precise multi-point injector technology and uniquely shaped piston cavities for a more fully controlled burn process, produces 7 additional horsepower than the base engine at 155, and 13 lb-ft of additional torque found 400 rpm lower in the rev range giving it 10- to 15-percent more low- to mid-range torque along with 15-percent less fuel consumption and emissions than Mazda's regular 2.0-litre engine; 2) SKYACTIV-MT 6-speed manual and SKYACTIV-DRIVE 6-speed automatic transmission with manual-mode instead of the 5-speed units used by other Mazda3 models (except for the 6-speed manual used by the Mazda3 GT) is as quick shifting as anything in the class and smoother than most (but paddles would be nice) while more efficient thanks to

Mazda3 interior is especially upscale with GS-Leather package. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

an extra tall final gear ratio; 3) SKYACTIV-BODY that incorporates more lightweight materials for an 8-percent reduction in weight equaling 100 kilos (220 lbs) less mass yet still managing 30-percent better stiffness while improving crash safety performance; 4) SKYACTIV-CHASSIS that is tweaked for better response in the corners and more stability at high speeds yet less rolling resistance; all adding up to better fuel economy than even the less powerful base Mazda3 GX at 7.1 L/100km city and 5.0 highway for the 6-speed automatic equipped 5-door Sport model I was testing. The same car in base GX guise puts out respectable numbers, but at 8.7 city and 6.0 highway they fall shy of the GS-SKY. The GS-SKY sedan does even better on the highway at 4.9! Throughout hilly Vancouver, and not driving it like a choirboy, I averaged about 7 L/100km. Yes, not as advertised, which is always the case in Canada, but still very good for the class. And a bonus: despite the high compression it runs on cheaper regular fuel!

Details like 5-way heated seats make the Mazda3 wonderful to live with. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

Hmmm… more gain with less pain on the pocketbook? I like the way Mazda thinks.

The GS-SKY also comes with some goodies that I think you'll like, such as a sporty leather-wrapped tilt and telescopic steering wheel with cruise and audio controls connecting through to a 6-speaker stereo with a CD and auxiliary input, plus Bluetooth phone connectivity with audio streaming, automatic headlamps, rain-sensing variable intermittent wipers, heated powered mirrors, heated seats, 16-inch alloy rims on 205/55R16 all-season rubber, chrome tipped exhaust, and more, plus all the usual powered equipment and safety features, of course.

My tester had a powered moonroof and the optional GS-Leather package that adds an 8-way powered driver's seat, leather upholstery, a faux-leather sliding console cover, and vinyl side door panel trim, not to mention fog lights. It really feels upscale inside, more like a compact

Nice seats! (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

premium model than the mainstream compact competitor its $22,990 as tested price suggests. If you don't need all the luxury, a base GS-SKY Sport starts life at $21,590, while the base sedan is priced at $20,590; all prices include destination fees.

And most, like me, find the Mazda3 Sport a pretty good looking hatchback, made more up to date this year with a subtle refresh that gives it a new front fascia with circular fog lamps and an updated grille. I like the SKY's transparent blue headlamp rings while the aforementioned blue engine cover looks like an expensive custom job. Very cool.

Practical? Of course, especially in

Look under the hood and you won't have to question whether you're driving a SKYACTIV model, as the engine cover is blue! (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

5-door Sport trim. Pop up the hatchback and you'll find more room than the average midsize sedan's trunk at 481 litres (16.9 cubic feet), or drop its 60/40-split rear seatbacks forward and cargo capacity grows to a wagon-like 1,213 litres (42.8 cubic feet).

What's not to like? After a week behind the wheel I really can't think of anything it needs? Well, I suppose I'd like to see Mazda add the idle-stop technology it offers in other markets, where the engine shuts down while waiting at a stoplight. And a USB slot would be nice, and smart for Mazda to include now that the world is embracing Android phones. But that's about it.

Add up all the benefits and the 2012 Mazda3 GS-SKY is probably the most well rounded compact offering today. It's fun, efficient, practical and affordable.
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The Honda Fit has a tall, practical profile and vast expanses of glass, but still manages to look cute and swoopy. (Photo: Simon Hill, Canadian Auto Press)

A single comment about the car, good or bad. It's not that I hadn't put in the seat time, either: I'd run teenagers to parties, lugged several big bags of sails down to the marina, buzzed out along the freeway on some now-forgotten errand, and gone shopping with my wife to procure enough groceries to keep the teenagers happy for a week (that's a lot of groceries).

Through all of this the Honda Fit Sport had performed flawlessly, accommodating kids, spinnakers and shopping bags with equal aplomb, and getting me around with unremarkable ease.

That's the thing about the Fit: It's an eminently versatile, practical and easy-to-live-with little hatchback. It's zippy enough to be satisfying on the road, yet thrifty enough to be pleasing at the pump. It has cute looks that somehow overcome its tall, practical profile and the immense expanse of windows that provide such good outward visibility. It's all this, and yet - for me at least - it operates entirely in the background. Get

Power for the Fit comes from a 1.5-litre 4-cylinder that delivers 117 horsepower and gets city/hwy fuel consumption of 7.1 / 5.4 L/100km with the automatic. (Photo: Simon Hill, Canadian Auto Press)

in the car and it's likeable enough and does pretty much everything you need. Park it in the garage and you might just forget that it exists, at least until you next need it.

The Fit's unassuming goodness was introduced to North America for the 2007 model year, at which time it was already six years into its first generation. The second-generation car debuted only two years later, for the 2009 model year, and for 2012 it has been changed only very little, with a bit of extra sound deadening, and with the Sport version getting a slightly different grille, black headlight surrounds, new upholstery and interior trim, plus some addition equipment including Bluetooth and a USB plug.

Other differentiating features of the Sport include 16-inch alloy wheels instead of 15-inch steel wheels, a rear stabilizer bar for improved cornering, an underbody spoiler kit, fog lights, a chrome exhaust tip, a leather-wrapped steering wheel and an upgraded audio system.

Power for the front-wheel drive Fit comes from a 1.5-litre, 16-valve i-VTEC inline-4 that develops 117 horsepower and 106 lb-ft of torque and is mated to either a 5-speed manual or an optional 5-speed automatic transmission.

A relatively upright seating position means the view out of the Fit is grand. Interior materials all look good and everything fits together as it should. (Photo: Simon Hill. Canadian Auto Press)

City/highway fuel economy is rated at 7.1 / 5.7 L/100km with the manual and 7.1 / 5.4 L/100km with the automatic. I found that the engine could be a little busy-sounding when pushed hard, but it moved things along reasonably well and my observed fuel economy with the automatic transmission wasn't too far off the rated economy.

On the road the Fit offers a controlled yet comfortable ride, and agile handling. My only comment (one of the very few notes I made over the course of the week) is that the power steering is perhaps a little over-assisted - it makes the Fit easy to drive, especially at low speeds, but I thought that the car could sometimes feel a little skittish.

Inside, the Fit provides a fairly upright seating position with expansive views. My Sport edition test car had cloth on the door uppers, which is a nice touch, but the rest of the interior is all hard plastic, albeit good-looking and well-assembled hard plastic. The real magic inside the Fit is it's very flat rear floor (Honda put the gas tank under the front

The back seats are exceptionally versatile, and either fold forward to lie flat, or flip up to allow transport of tall items. (Photo: Simon Hill. Canadian Auto Press)

seats to achieve this) and its multi-talented rear seats that can flip forward and lie flat, or tip up like a movie-theatre seat to allow transport of taller items such as potted plants, for instance. All-in-all it's pretty handy, and the versatility of the rear seats allows the Fit to offer a positively cavernous cargo capacity considering its size. Happily the rear seats are also reasonably comfortable: My long-legged teenage daughter is always quick to complain about tight legroom ("Daaaaad, move your seat forward, it's cramped back here") but aboard the Fit I had no such complaints, and in fact she was surprisingly complimentary when questioned about the rear seat, saying "Uh, it's okay." (That's high praise from a teenager!)

Of course, one of the features that Honda

In the crowded and competitive subcompact segment, the Fit stands out as one of the more practical offerings. (Photo: Simon Hill. Canadian Auto Press)

trades on is the company's stellar reputation for reliability and safety, and Fit covers the latter with antilock brakes, active front head restraints, vehicle stability assist and a comprehensive array of airbags.

Price-wise, the Fit starts at $14,580 plus $1,495 in destination charges for the base DX model, and climbs up to $18,880 plus destination charges for the Fit Sport. My test car had the automatic transmission which adds an additional $1,200, for a starting price of $20,080. Within this price range, the endearingly practical Fit goes up against some seriously strong competitors including the Ford Fiesta, Hyundai Accent and Chevrolet Sonic, to name but a few. One could argue that all of these cars offer more style and higher levels of equipment for the money. But it's also probably true that none of them can touch the Fit when it comes to interior space and versatility. If practical is what you want, the Fit is still a great fit.
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The all-new 2012 Honda CR-V looks exactly how a CR-V should.

Yes, it appears that Honda got its priorities right with the all-new 2012 CR-V. After all, there are many ways to woo customers to your brand, or in Honda's case with its top-10 best-selling CR-V, keep them coming back. You can get dramatic with styling updates. Not in the cards for the new CR-V, which shows evolutionary design changes that I happen to like. You can add soft-touch plastics to give your mainstream product more premium appeal, which Honda clearly didn't do. You can add swanky new features to wow potential buyers, and to this end Honda stepped up with an expanded-view driver's mirror, intelligent multi-information display, and Bluetooth with SMS text messaging capability.

Classic CR-V styling cues, like vertical taillights, join fresh new styling front to back. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

And you can make what is essentially a family vehicle more convenient to families, which is exactly what Honda did with its slick new rear seat design.

Probably more importantly, Honda made the 2012 CR-V 10-percent more efficient at the pump. City mileage improves from last year's 9.8 L/100km FWD and 10.1 AWD rating to 9.0 and 9.2, while the 2011 CR-V's 7.1 and 7.5 highway rating drops down to 6.4 and 6.6 for 2012. The drivetrain appears the same on paper: a 4-cylinder with 2.4 litres of displacement, dual overhead cams, 16 valves and Honda's i-VTEC variable valve timing, giving 4 more horsepower at 185 and 2 additional lb-ft of torque for a total of 163, plus a 5-speed automatic transmission, so bigger efficiency gains are more likely to have come from new Eco Assist and more efficient electric power steering. Electric power steering doesn't put as much drag on the engine thanks to no hydraulic

The CR-V handles corners well. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

pumps and their associated pully systems and belts, whereas Eco Assist adjusts the transmission shift points and mildly retards throttle response to save on fuel. Note: Eco Assist can be turned off if you'd rather have snappier acceleration.

To that end the CR-V feels fairly brisk off the line and shifts should be quick enough for most. Likewise, Honda's smallest SUV feels good in the corners, its conventional front strut and multilink rear setup ideal for tromping around downtown, slinging through S curves and even trekking over light-duty trails. For the latter you hardly need all-wheel drive unless conditions are slippery, and even then the standard traction control should get you going and stability control keep you on track. Just don't try anything too adventurous, because the CR-V is only an SUV in name. Consider it a tall wagon with only slightly more ground clearance than a Civic at 160

The CR-V looks luxurious in leather-clad EX-L trim... the Touring badge adds navigation and some extra chrome trim. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

millimetres (6.2 inches) in FWD form; the AWD version gets 170 mm (6.6 inches) of space between a rock and its lowest point… i.e. tread lightly.

Its tall wagon shape allows for good interior space, which is really the CR-V's mission after all. With those fabulous rear seats tumbled forward you can stuff in up to 2,007 litres (70.8 cubic feet) of gear, or if you're carrying a full load of people the CR-V is good for about half that at 1,054 litres (37.2 cubic feet). That's a little more than twice the size of an average midsize car's trunk volume, although the extra space is mostly found in height. Either way, the CR-V is a lot more convenient to live with than any car, something I experienced when I got a really good deal on a large piece of office furniture that slipped neatly in behind the front seats with no fuss at all.

Come to think of it, "no fuss at all" could be an effective (albeit hardly catchy) CR-V marketing phrase. Nothing about the car, less the rear seats, really jumped out at me as particularly exciting, but the sum of the parts

Easy folding rear seatbacks are best-in-class. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

resulted in a smile on my face every time got behind the wheel. Standard features are about the same as what others in this class offer, including its 4-wheel discs with ABS, electronic brake force distribution and brake assist. The same goes for its front side-thorax and front-to-rear side-curtain airbags. All the usual powered options are there, plus heated remote mirrors, heated front seats, a rearview camera, a tilt and telescopic steering wheel with audio controls, plus aux and USB inputs for the stereo. The LX starts at $27,580 including freight in FWD and $29,580 for AWD.

The CR-V EX adds $2,800 to the sticker along with some exterior trim upgrades, fog lights, 17-inch alloys, dual-zone automatic climate control, a powered moonroof, auto headlamps, and more, while the $34,680 EX-L ups the luxury quotient with leather seats and premium audio boasting XM satellite radio. The top-line Touring, the model I tested, is priced at $36,580 including shipping.

I suppose

No shortage of stowage space. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

the Touring would have been more convenient with proximity sensing remote access and push-button start, something most of its rivals offer in top-tier trim, but the navigation worked well and kept me from using the nav system on my Blackberry (which could have otherwise resulted in an expensive traffic ticket).

And that brings us back to Honda getting its priorities right with the new CR-V. Of the two cars I was testing that week, I kept going back to the CR-V. Not only because it was the most practical, but also because I felt totally comfortable behind the wheel. It's easy to live with, light on the wallet, and looks exactly the way a CR-V should look. That it's now made in Canada instead of the USA is just a feel-good bonus.

CR-V owners, your new ride has arrived.
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