We had a bit of time on the weekend morning, so continued our exploration of replacements for our family ride. We’d listed the Toyota Showroom to check out the Altis earlier on, but added in the Mazda showroom for their series 3 sedans at the last minute from neighbors’ recommendations. We didn’t initially have the best impressions of the Mazda 3 from 8 years back when we were shopping for the Honda Civic replacement (basically Ling banged her head on the door frame LOL), but the comparison this time round was interesting and very close!
Toyota Corolla Altis 1.6 Elegance
Very appealing exterior with a futuristic-looking front grill
Very roomy interior with lots of leg room, and almost as much headroom as the Latio
Large info-display panel
Feature set that’s almost to what the Forte K3 offered – including knockdown passenger seats, electrically-controlled driver seat, keyless entry/ignition etc. It was just missing the memory-retaining and cooled driver seat
Very cool keyless entry system that makes use of motion sensing
Auto-locking doors that kicks in after a few minutes
Good performance and handling in the limited test drive we had
On the other hand: I thought the glossy interior panels were rather cheapo-looking. And Ling thought the interior looked quite uncle-ish too and from our parents’ generation (I was alright with it).
Most seriously – Hannah said she didn’t like the car!
We were tended to by a pretty experienced salesperson, but oddly again – like the Nissan and Kia salespeople from earlier in the week – didn’t seem to know very much about the competing models within the same price and functional bracket.
Mazda 3 1.5 Sedan Deluxe
Sporty looking exterior – though also where Ling and I differed. I like the Altis’ exterior looks, while she preferred the Mazda 3
Placement of the info-display panel is closer to eye-level than the Altis
Doesn’t have Altis’ auto-locking doors upon driving off, but its auto-locking is proximity-based (which we thought would be more useful)
Made in Japan!
More luxurious and comfy cushioning than the Altis.
Keyless locking works on both front passenger and driver sides
Almost identical feature set otherwise to the Altis
She didn’t banged her head getting in and out of the car this time!
On the other hand; the interior was obviously more compact and not nearly as much legroom as the Altis or Sylphy.
Pretty noisy engine especially on start-up, and also when driving about
The attending salesperson was very helpful. He drove out additional models for us to check out features, and also brought us to their basement car storage to look at available colors as they are on actual cars (not just sample plates). He was also a little bit more informed about other manufacturers’ offerings too.
The Mazda 3 was a little bit more pricey, but was offering a slightly higher trade-in value for our Latio – which resulted in almost similar overall price packages between the two.
As it is, we think we’ve seen enough and will be deciding soon between the Sylphy, Forte K3, Altis, and the Mazda 3. For the moment: one of the only two pictures we took during our visits:
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