edmunds: Face-Off Tournament Final: Mazdaspeed 3 versus Volkswagen GTI

[MS3_KIDD]

same experience here. friends car is fun to drive and its quite comfortable for me and the thing hauls ass...
but i love the raw powar of my ms3

yeah they are powerful cars, with perfect body lines in all the right colors, comfortable recaro's, and a kicking sound system

and VW did it the right way when making the AE

you cant beat the beautiful production number plates on the radio surround

*hint*hint*
mazda makes you look your number up online lol

 

[chief_wiggum]

My first GTi was the first North American, well, Canada, anyway) GTi, a 1980 Rabbit GTi, 1.6 litres of K-jet goodness, plaid Recaros, 13" steel wheels, a FIVE speed transmission. It would do 10.5 to 60 and go about 105 mph top. It was a hot stick, for 1980.

I always forget I had one too back in the early/mid-90s; a sweet 1984 black one with red trim. Owned it for a month and it was in the shop all but 3 days; needless to say, it was replaced.

 

[nypz]

I don't know who this guy is, but I don't think he spends much time driving cars. Obviously doesn't know how to drive well either. /sarcasm

Ok and all he said was it takes more than the avg car to keep straight, no s***.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

"The other day I saw a guy who must have just been this side of a hundred picking up his white ms3 from service at the dealership. He loaded his old lady into the passengers side, her walker in the hatch, then hobbled around the car to the drivers seat. Coolest old dude ever, even went wot when he pulled onto the main road."

I love it! This will be me some day. Assuming I live that long.

I test drove a VW a couple of decades ago and thought it was amazing. Felt light, nimble, reasonably quick. Didn`t buy it because a VW afficionado I knew warned me that even then they were living on their reputation quality-wise.

 

[chief_wiggum]

"The other day I saw a guy who must have just been this side of a hundred picking up his white ms3 from service at the dealership. He loaded his old lady into the passengers side, her walker in the hatch, then hobbled around the car to the drivers seat. Coolest old dude ever, even went wot when he pulled onto the main road."

turbo charged, 4 wheeled viagra....

 

[Kain]

turbo charged, 4 wheeled viagra....

 

[leadf00t]

Nice one Kain !!!!!

 

[MS3MB]

ya i drove my friends gti and i would say the speed3 wins easily maybe its becuase i own a speed3 though but i wasnt that impressed by the gti

 

[DaleNixon]

I loved the GTI Mk IV. Mk V not so much. If I had one and chipped it I think I'd be happy though. 20lbs. of boost through that K03 is pretty sweet!

 

[jaxmazda5]

I own a chipped GTI. you get used to it after a while then you switch back to stock for a week, then switch back....and so on. otherwise you get the mod bug and the wifey yells when UPS man shows up.

I didn't read this article but it seems about 50/50 overall. half the authors choose the GTI (for all the reasons we've read yada yada) and half choose the speed. GTI does everything good but performance is only average, brakes are average etc...

Cool thing is that the GTI is still really the #1 comparison against the speed and the Cobalts, Calibers, Mini's of the world are always 3rd, 4th and 5th. I kinda wish i would have gotten an MS3 because my next car has to be a kid hauler so this was my last shot at having a fun little performance car.

 

[TRDMS3]

GTi is nothing to be bothered about really, although it's faced some competition for the MS3 however I never found anything about it to be appealing, from the styling as someone described it as "cute" lol to being simply overpriced, get the speed3 already and you won't look back as more than a handful of folks mentioned on here.

 

[Antonio DiMarco]

Not surprising

I'm not surprised that the GTI and speed faced off. Mazda admitted in one of the first reviews in sports car compact that they benchmarked the speed against the gti. So based on the votes and dead heat race, Mazda definitely hit the mark perfectly.

 

[Yamasaki]

I have owned both a GTI (2003 MKIV) and our current 09 Speed 3 and loved them both. I will say that the only thing that I prefered with the GTI over the Mazda was interior quality. Those VW's interior's are super nice. But the Mazda is more fun to drive!

 

[MS3_KIDD]

yeahh cant beat the recaros in them things

 

[ChrisG]

My MS3 is the first Japanese car I've owned in 25 years of driving. The last American car was a lightly modded 1986 5.0 Mustang, and then the run of VW's began:
-1994 Golf 2.0 8v (drove it into the ground)
-2000 Jetta GLS 1.8T (blown turbo)
-2002 GTI 1.8T (bad coilpacks and various other annoyances)
-2003 GTI VR6 24v (best car I ever owned, before my MS3)

The hit and miss nature of VW reliability and the attraction of a change brought me to the Mazda dealer, and that was that. The MS3 is far and away the most capable car I've owned yet.

 

[MrDouble]

Just came from a 07 GTI that I daily drove for 2.5 years. Only had the MS3 for 2 weeks so it's not a fair comparison, but here's my feeling:

Both are great cars, depends on what you prefer. GTI is refined but disconnected. MS3 is rougher but more involving. MS3 is performance first, whereas GTI tries to be all-rounder.

Stock vs stock, there's no question that MS3 performance is a notch above. Chip the GTI like I did, and it's very close to about 70mph. Above that MS3 walks. Handling, I would say GTI is more effortless and somewhat more precise, but it lacks feel, feels distant, unlike the MS3. Brakes are sooo much better on the MS3, that was one weak area of GTI, soft pedal feel.

GTI was nice, but MS3 brings out the emotion that reinforces passion for cars.

 

[Antonio DiMarco]

+1

MS3 brings out the emotion that reinforces passion for cars.

And that's what Mazda's Zoom-Zoom matra is all about.

 

[kvndoom]

I would have been interested in cross-shopping the Mark 6 GTI against the 2009 MS3. But I really got tired of waiting. The MkV's are just too ugly for me, so there was zero chance of me getting one.

I have a feeling the 2010 GTI's will be much more popular than the 2010 Speed3's, because VW made an ugly car beautiful again, while Mazda made a beautiful car look silly.

 

[shaneS]

I would pick ms3 ( and i did ) over gti any day. Just the fact that they make the gti in an auto turns me off.