Small car under $35,000

Mazda3 Maxx Sport

As the single biggest-selling category of vehicles in Australia, small cars remain a favourite among Aussies looking for affordable, practical and high-value motoring.

They made up almost 20 per cent of the total new car market in 2017 and, as you’d expect, the ferocious competition in this segment has been great for consumers.

Mazda fired a significant shot across the bows of the competition in July 2016 when it made a number of important safety features standard across the range. These include autonomous braking, blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert – the latter being a particularly useful daily driving safety feature. Some of the competition is still catching up on this aspect alone.

However, this was just one of the reasons it nosed ahead of the pack in Australia’s Best Cars 2018. The Mazda3’s build and finish remains class-leading and, at $27,000 drive away, it’s as close to premium as you’ll get without paying premium small car prices.

The features that add to this are the quality of the materials and the neat, solid ways they’re put together. They’re all pleasing to look at and touch, without being ostentatious. The functionality of the interior and its controls, and the ease with which people can interact with them, has long been a targeted area of design for Mazda.

This is clearly evident in the intuitiveness of the controls. The driver’s relationship to the major controls, being the steering wheel, pedals and gearshift, also remains best-in-class, making the Mazda3 very strong in the area of ergonomics. It’s not the cheapest car in the class, but you can clearly see why.

Mazda’s focus on driver involvement, even in a high-volume car such as this, is also one of this car’s stand-out attributes. Mazda’s G-vectoring control, which manages the engine’s torque during cornering to improve handling, is just one of the features that contribute to its rewarding on-road dynamics.

Driving the Mazda3 Maxx Sport has also become a little more convenient and comfortable following an update in February 2018 when Mazda added rain-sensing wipers, automatic on/off headlights, dual-zone climate control and an electric parking brake.

The Mazda3 excelled with minimal fuel consumption, claiming 5.8L/100km. It’s important to note the Mazda3 still only requires 91 RON fuel, unlike some of its competitors that require the significantly more expensive 95 RON premium fuel and consume it at the same rate.

It’s also clear Mazda has been working on getting road and engine noise intrusion down, which along with all the above, has helped push the Mazda3 to the front of the pack by a comfortable margin in Australia’s Best Cars 2018.