I’ll get it out of the way early; I prefer the original Mazdaspeed3 to this second-generation by a rather large margin. This car isn’t the same visceral indulgence that the original was. Everything has been numbed to a degree, including the first gen’s characteristic torque steer.

That’s not to say that this thing is numb. That’s not even slightly true, but compared to its predecessor, it lacks the character that made the original car so enjoyable.

What it doesn’t lack is speed. Power comes from the same 2.3-liter turbocharged four that powered the Ür-MS3, and delivers 263 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. The powerband is plenty wide, but the turbo runs out of juice at around 6000 rpm, well below the 6700 rpm redline. This is an issue that also plagued the original, but not to this degree. Thankfully, by the time you get to 6000 rpm, you are probably breaking the speed limit already, so you won’t really spend much time up there outside of a track environment.

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