As a longstanding member of the tribe known as Save the manuals!—Some would say he’s been around long enough to be his elder statesman. I’m always happy when I hear that there is a car with a gearbox that requires you to keep your own gears moving. There’s something about coordinating the actions of your right arm and left leg with those of your accelerator, all in the pursuit of smooth forward progress, that engages the mind and increases involvement in driving in a way that produces small, steady doses of happiness.
That’s probably why the part of my brain that expects pleasurable experiences clicked when I pulled open the door of the Mazda 3 2.5 S Hatchback Premium and saw a stubby manual gear lever sprouting from the center console. Eureka! We already love the funky little hatchback for its aggro looks and pleasant stance, but this is the only model in the 3 Series that offers something our favorite hot hatch, the current top 10 winning Volkswagen GTI, doesn’t: a manual gearbox.
Could the DIY six-speed gearbox be the spicy thing angry sauce that turns the pleasant Mazda 3 recipe into something delicious – a viable alternative to the spicy Vee-Dub? Time for a taste.
While I admit that the presence of a DIY gearbox evokes a subtle Pavlovian response deep in my gut, it does nothing to guarantee that the driving experience will be extraordinary. Every gearbox, no matter how rewarding the shifting action, must work harmoniously with the engine, clutch and accelerator pedal. The rest of the car it lives in counts, too: a smooth transmission can’t make a bad car good, but a bad car can make a great manual transmission irrelevant.
With the Mazda 3 2.5 S Premium Hatchback you don’t have to worry about that. Almost everything about it feels, well, premiummore like you’d expect if it wore a BMW, Genesis or Mercedes badge.
The feeling of well-being begins the moment you slide inside. From the driver’s seat you look out onto an interior covered with soft materials: black artificial leather on the dashboard and doors, with chocolate brown inserts in the black leather seats. There are many French seams in contrasting colors on the doors, dashboard, center console and center armrest. Harder materials are largely kept below eye level. A touch of metal cladding brightens up the interior. The instrument panel houses round tachometer and speedometers in traditional white-on-black.
The overall effect is tastefully understated and unexpectedly rich; photos can hardly do it justice. There are also plenty of standard features inside, including a Bose stereo with 12 speakers, power driver’s seat with power lumbar support and memory, heated front seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel and a moonroof. (Our test car was spruced up with the show car-esque Soul Red Crystal Metallic paint for $595, crazy lighted side sill plates for $575, and $190 worth of all-weather floor mats.)
The premium atmosphere continues when you light the fire and drive away. The naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four emits a quiet, buttered rum hum that sounds expensive. And this model’s central focus, the six-speed manual transmission, is a nice complement to the 3’s four-cylinder. The clutch action is effortless and easy to modulate for smooth starting and shifting. The shifter slides through the gears, much like those on BMWs of the recent past; it is well isolated from vibration and each throw lands softly at the end of the lever stroke. It feels like money.
With only 186 hp, the Mazda cannot match the performance of the 241 hp VW. The GTI lost its manual from model year 2025, and with its standard dual-clutch automatic, the current GTI charges to 60 mph in just 5.6 seconds; for the record, our 2022 long-term GTI with the six-speed manual did the job in 5.8. The stick-shift 3 takes 7.0 seconds to reach miles-per-minute. The gap widens further in the quarter mile, with the current GTI zipping through in 14.2 seconds at 100 mph, while the manual 3 gets there in 15.6 seconds at 90 mph. (Our long-term manual GTI covered the distance in 14.3 seconds at 101 mph.)
The Mazda makes up for that performance deficit with a powertrain that further enhances the luxurious atmosphere you feel in the beautifully appointed cabin. The engine revs easily and so smoothly and quietly that you have to strain to hear the muffled growl even when you’re working hard enough to achieve brisk acceleration.
It’s just fun to zip up and down the Mazda’s gearbox. And because you shift gears yourself – rather than a computer programmed for maximum fuel economy – you tend to drive naturally through city traffic at higher revs and out of the low-rpm lazy zone. In traffic, the 3 responded to even the slightest movements of my right foot without delay, making it feel faster than you’d expect at 60mph.
The 3 Hatchback’s small luxury car feel is also reflected in the way it drives on the road. The steering is precise and reassuringly progressive, but light. The suspension is more supple over the bigger waves and bumps – the ride is on the soft, compliant side of ‘sporty’ – although it registers the sharp impacts of pavement joints and bumps with a sharp ‘thump’.
With our local roads covered in road salt or buried under a layer of snow, there wasn’t much opportunity to put pressure on the 3’s handling. However, a cast around some dry driveways indicated it was quite stable when leaned on. The modestly sized 215/45R-18 Toyo Proxes A40 all-season rubber felt like it offered decent grip, which was backed up by the performance of a 0.88g skidpad. The most recent GTI we tested recorded a result of 0.91 grams.
Impressively, the Mazda 3 hatch was on par with the braking of the more performance-oriented GTI. It stopped from 75 mph in 164 feet, or five feet sooner than the first test of our long-term GTI, which also wore 18-inch wheels wrapped in all-season tires.
Numbers aside, the GTI is easily the more dialed-in driver’s car; It steers sharper, corners more confidently, rides tighter and is sportier in every way – the one that makes you grin wider when the road wobbles. That makes this a tale of two cars. Both are harmonious, complete packages, each with its own character.
The Mazda 3 2.5 S Premium Hatchback is a sweetheart in its own right, a softer, gentler and more luxurious car that’s still a lot of fun to drive and at a price that undercuts the GTI by several thousand dollars. All good. And then there is the refined six-speed gearbox. For this recognized member of the Save the manuals! stock, that’s enough to make it a viable alternative to VW’s hot hatch.
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Specifications
2026 Mazda 3S Premium Hatchback
Vehicle type: front engine, front wheel drive, 5-passenger, 4-door hatchback
PRICE
Base/as tested: $32,685/$34,045
Options: Soul Red Crystal Metallic paint, $595; illuminated door sills, $575; all-weather floor mats, $190
ENGINE
DOHC 16 valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection
Displacement: 152 inches32488 cm3
Power: 186 hp @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 186 lb-ft at 4000 rpm
TRANSFER
Six-speed manual transmission
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: struts/torsion beam
Brakes, front/rear: 11.0-inch ventilated disc/10.4-inch disc
Tyres: Toyo Proxes A40
215/45R-18 89V M+S
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 107.3 inches
Length: 175.6 inches
Width: 70.7 inches
Height: 56.7 inches
Passenger volume, F/R: 51/40 ft3
Loading volume: 20 ft3
Curb weight: 3052 pounds
CD TEST RESULTS
100 km/h: 7.0 sec
1/4 mile: 15.6 sec at 90 mph
160 km/h: 19.5 sec
The above results show a 1-foot rollout of 0.3 sec. away.
Rolling start, 5-100 km/h: 7.4 sec
Top gear, 50-80 km/h: 11.4 sec
Top gear, 80-110 km/h: 10.8 sec
Top speed (gov ltd): 125 mph
Braking, 110–0 km/h: 50 meters
Road holding, 90 meter skidpad: 0.88 g
Interior noise
Idle: 38 dBA/3 sounds
Full throttle: 74 dBA
Cruising at 110 km/h: 69 dBA/25 sone
CD FUEL CONSUMPTION
Observed: 25 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
Combined/city/highway: 28/25/34 mpg
CD TESTING EXPLAINED
Rich Ceppos has evaluated cars and automotive technology during a career that included a decade at General Motors, two stints at Car and driver a total of 20 years, and thousands of kilometers traveled in racing cars. He was in music school when he realized what he really wanted to do in life, and somehow he succeeded. Between the two of them CD messages of which he was editor-in-chief Automobile magazine; was executive vice president at Campbell Marketing & Communications; worked in GM’s product development area; and became publisher of Car week. He has raced continuously since college, holding SCCA and IMSA professional racing licenses and has competed in the 24 Hours of Daytona. He currently operates a 1999 Miata, and he appreciates that none of his younger colleagues have yet said “Okay, Boomer” when he tells one of his stories about the crazy old days at CD.
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