Originally Posted by
TMonk
Thanks, I remember now you posting something similar a few years back about your speed3. Can you comment on it's reliability? I assume it is very good due to it being Japanese. My wife has a '08 Mazda 3 and it is just a really great car, stands out over my Corolla in almost every way.
The GTI is another option, forgot about that one.
Other than changing the brakes, oil and the plugs (it eats plugs but it's also boosted to like 21psi) I do basically nothing to it. It's been super reliable. Still feels like the day I bought it basically.
I think I did one rear shock that was leaking. The forums usually don't have much in the way of issues either. One long term reliability thing might be the oil in the intake because it's one of the earlier direct injection cars, so the intake valves get gummed up, but other than a bit of power loss I don't know that there's really any issues there.