The Buro test drive: 40 years of everyone's first car

From a boxy bean to a speedy sports coupe, Noelle Faulkner looks back on the style evolution of this beloved hatch and takes each one for a spin.

Everyone knows someone whose first car was a Mazda3 (or its predecessor, the Mazda323). It was a ride that gave lifts to parties, snuck you out of the house, acted a cosy setting for teenage romances, brazenly raced other P platers at the traffic lights and a car that was ( and still is) known to rarely die, no matter how hard you hammered it: a trusty steed to fairly new drivers. And still, it's a car that has seemed to mature as fast as we did, in style, design and performance.

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the beloved hatch, which has evolved from a cool, yet dinky, boxy bean with tan vinyl seats and a cigarette lighter and ashtray, into a sleek, tech-savvy showstopper with Bose speakers and text-to-voice SMS software. To celebrate, I flew to Mt Cotton Driver Training Centre (a closed-road track in Queensland) in the rain, where Mazda boldly handed the keys to their Heritage Collection, an archive of "rare, museum-quality" specimens and said, take a slippery trip down memory lane....

1980 MAZDA3

In the middle of the Mt Cotton track, a mob of kangaroos watch on as you do laps – They’re cute, but they also drum up anxiety that at any moment they can jump out at you, especially when you’re behind the wheel of a lightweight box void of modern day safety features. I’ve been told they’re aware of the cars (Porsche hosts it’s driving school here), but still, going from the brand new Mazda3 I drove up here (complete with airbags, ABS, Emergency Brake Assist, Driver Attention Alert and more), to this 48kW, 1.4L bean with slightly wobbly steering, on a very wet road, offered more of a thrill than one would expect.

“It carries people. It carries things. It carries itself beautifully,” reads the original ad for mega-lightweight hatch in 1977. “One of the roomiest and most spacious cars in its class.” This was true – the simple, chocolate and woodgrain dash and open, bright windows made for a retro-minimalist experience, the thin steering wheel, clunky gear shift, rear-wheel drive and the fact I had to open my window to de-mist the windscreen just added to it.

1984 MAZDA3 DELUXE

With a fabulous (deluxe?) colour palette of mint and mocha, a cassette tape deck and plush, foamy velvet (or is it chenille?) seats and a huge leisure-y boot: 1984’s 323 is looking quite cool. As expected, the gearbox (5-speeds transmission? luxe) was still a little dinky, but now we’re rocking a front-wheel drive, 1.5L engine and a fancy ‘80s tachometer on the dash.

Driving this thing in the rain, it had more poise than I expected, even in the wet. Throw a big set of non-heritage collection tyres on this thing, pop in the era-appropriate "Born Again" by Black Sabbath in the cassette player and you’re in for a good time.

1991 MAZDA ASTINA SP

Here we go. Pop-up headlights, a round and hyper-sporty rear with a lift-back hatch, a super-tight five-speed transmission, sunroof and an interior that feels scratchy and lacks an inkling of sexiness.

It’s a good thing then, that this little sporty coupe was fast, sharp, balanced and responsive, and, arguably because of the manual gearbox, was the most fun to drive around the track.

The downside: it gave me mega flashbacks to the cars of my teens- I definitely have more than one memory of sitting in the back of these with an illegal Midori Illusion in my hand circa 2001.

1996 MAZDA ASTINA V6

It’s no surprise that out of the six cars I’m in today, this one has the least amount of fuel, it’s the only V6 on the lot. It packs 104kW of power and a four speed automatic transmission, it’s well-balance and super fun, but I would love to see how this ran brand new with the manual 5-speed gearbox. You’ll notice the Astina has moved away from that 80s hedonistic-cool (gone are the pop-up lights and the Euro-inspired sporty butt) and more into a space I can only describe as 90s hairdresser. The interior is still dark and corporate and a CD player is now standard. WIN.

2001 MAZDA ASTINA SP20
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n 2001, Mazda dropped the Astina SP20 – a sports model with firmer suspension, a long-awaited 98kW, 2L engine and a fancy mega-00s body kit. The interior moved away from that all-black look, introducing silver accents (see? Sporty!). I’ll also note that generally “SP” was used by Mazda for special motorsport builds, so putting the SP badge on this was a big deal (even though, it had been used before and it wasn’t actually built by the Mazda race team).

You might remember race editions were a big thing in the early 2000s, and used as a marketing tool for makers like Holden, Ford and Toyota to entice young revheads to buy entry level cars- it was the year of Fast and the Furious, don’t forget. But really, this was a very fun car to hit the track in.

2005 MAZDA3

And here we are at the first generation of the Mazda3 as we know it. A back-to-the-drawing-board car that threw away the 323 badge and came back with a longer wheelbase and inoffensive design – this is one of the few cars that hasn’t seem to date all that much in 12 years. Drive wise: it performs elegantly, powerfully and reliably. While I do miss the foamy interior and pop-up headlights of 323 past, it’s also still pretty fun to drive.

2017 MAZDA3

With over 700k units sold over those four decades, the Maxda3 is still one of Australia’s favourite cars – visit any road, car park or simply go for a walk to see for yourself. This year’s model sees a huge update, which introduces a range of tech features, including the aforementioned ABS, Emergency Brake Assist, keyless start, Dynamic Stability control, parking sensors and more as standard, and on the top end, Bose speakers, adaptive LED headlights, sat nav, Lane Assist, Driver Attention Alert and more. While it’s fun to go back in time, with this kind of tech, they haven’t made it easy…

NOELLE FAULKNER