Suzy paid full MSRP for her Mazda 3 5-door. She bought the first model year and the 5-doors were fairly hard to come by at first, so the dealerships weren't dealing much at the time.

Seems that Mazda is offering a few incentives on most of their vehicles. I'd say there is no reason for you to pay MSRP on any new vehicle, particularly something as pedestrian as a Mazda 3 or Civic. However the demand for the new 2-door Civic non-Si seems very high and I doubt you'll pay under MSRP in the first few months before they start flooding the dealerships with those cars.


The Mazda 3 has wonderful driving dynamics in stock form (and even better with a simple spring upgrade). Same platform as the Volvo S40 and the European Ford Focus. IMO it is well worth the price to get the 2.3l. Quite a bit more torque at your fingertips makes TONS of difference, and the gas mileage is still pretty good. A "base" 2.3l 4-door is around $17k and it still comes with all sorts of cool standard goodies which aren't found in other cars in the same class.

I'm pretty biased towards Ford/Mazda, so I'd lean more towards the 3 than I would the Civic. Seems like the Mazda has more value in comparision. Honda has really inflated their price tags across all models over the last 5 or so years. Whatever happened to the affordable Si?