Video: 2010 Mazda MAZDASPEED3

It's got a 263-horsepower engine, a six-speed manual transmission, and several other features that you're gonna want to check out if you're in the market for a small, fast hatchback. Now, living with the SPEED3, there's one thing you're going to notice right off the bat. It's kind of loud. It's got a loud exhaust, which also hear a lot of road noise up into the cabin. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a character for car like this, but it's one of those things you're going to want to check out when you test drive to make sure you can live with it. And like we said, it's got a 263-horsepower engine. It's actually a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, but there's very little lag actually gets up and goes very well. It's also a very well matched in the six-speed manual transmission. There's not a lot of hunting for gears and wondering if it should be in second or third, it's just matched up very nicely. Finally, the steering is very good. It's got a nice bit of boost when you're driving around parking lots and it low speeds, but it doesn't get too twitchy at high speeds. They really did their homework here. Now our test car came with Mazda's tech package and what you get with that is a six CD changer and this navigation system. Now, when I first saw that screen, I was a little skeptical. I was worried that it would be too small to read. It's not. I also wondered about the placement, but actually I really liked that. It's in your line of sight, but it's not distracting and it's not too big, and it doesn't draw your eye when you should be looking at the road. Finally though, I was really worried if I would actually be able to input any addresses into it. Cause there's no buttons here. It's all in this little palette on the steering wheel, but that actually turned out to be quite easy. I'm actually a big fan of this system now. Now like we said, this is a practical car. It's a hatchback, there's a nice sized cargo area here. It's perfect for grocery runs, things like that. I think you could fit a couple of golf bags in there pretty easily. Unfortunately it's only sort of practical. It does have four doors, which in theory means you could carry four adults, but as you'll see I have the seat where I would have it and um... yeah that's just not going to do it. Now the regular MAZDA3 is a pretty fun car to drive, but the SPEED3 takes it to a whole other level. I think if you're considering a car like a Subaru WRX, or Volkswagen GTI, you should really carve out some time to test drive this car. It's a solid entrance in the field of small, fast fund hatchbacks. <v Narrator>For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog kickingtires.net.