Best Van for the Buck!!!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Handling,styling,Power doors,versatility,mileage.

Cons: Rough ride,crap stock tires,engine and wind noise.

The Bottom Line: 
If you are looking for an affordable,versatile,sporty alternative to the massive peoplehaulers, then this is the van for you!!!

Author's Review
When our poor 1999 Isuzu Rodeo LS V6 started to overheat at a youthful 60K miles, my wife and I started hunting for our next Munchkin Mobile.

We knew that this time we would like to have a third row seat for Grandparents etc. Who always wanted to ride with the baby. We first went to Honda and looked at the Pilot and Odyssey but the dealer was selling them both for around $35K. After looking at Honda's offerings, we decided to look at the Sienna. We loved the space and styling but were troubled by the near $40K Price tag.

Determined to find something affordable, I called the local Mazda dealer for a last stab at trying to buy a minivan and to my delight I was told that they had 4 MPV's. We immediately boarded our ailing SUV and drove down to the dealer. The salesman showed us a Brand New '04 Rally White LX with the optional power doors. I Instantly fell in love with the Sporty Styling but was truly impressed with the way that Mazda made the van ride much more like a sport sedan than a bobbing, swaying boat like other minivans. I was taking freeway offramps at over 40MPH without it missing a beat-it reminded me a bit of my Mazda Miata MX-5 actually except I was carrying more people with me.

My wife was more impressed with the way she fit in the van. She is a very petite 4'9" and weighs a buck soaking wet. The driver's seat was fully adjustable as well as the steering column and we found a setting where all I have to do when I drive is simply move back the seat a few feet and we're in business.

I also love the fact that you can remotely open the dual sliding doors with a push of a button. This especially comes in handy when grocery shopping and the rugrats are anxious to sit in their seats.

The most enjoyable part of our trip to the dealer was the rebate they gave us on the van. It listed for $26,400 and we got it out the door for $21,000. They even took our Rodeo-Overheating, cracked window and all, as a trade and gave us blue book.

Shortly after we got the van though I noticed the ride was getting uncharacteristically rough. I later found that the tires were wearing out unevenly and took it in for a check up. They told me that the van needed alignment-probably from my wife hitting a pothole that she never told me about. After the alignment, it rode a bit better, in fact we took it to Southern Cali (a 360 mile trek one way for us) twice and the roughness was noticable but livable. A few thousand miles later, the ride got excrutiatingly irritating and I took it back in.

The service dept. told me that I probably would be better off with new tires-I was amazed because I only had about 15K miles on the ticker. I later found that this was a common problem with the stock Dunlop Sp4000's-they had a tendency to wear out fast and get out of round.

At about 30K miles I swapped the tires and got some Kumho Touring 712's and the difference is like night and day.

At 31K miles, the ignition coil took a crap on me and the dealer replaced it under warranty. The warranty by the way is a 4yr/50K mile Bumper to Bumper. One of our sliding doors is glitching and I will be taking it in soon to be fixed.

We now are approaching 35K miles and have not any real problems with the car. It is much smaller than it's rivals but that actually is a plus for my wife. It gets 18/25 gas mileage and we actually average about 330 miles per tank using approx. 14.5 gallons per fill-up and using 87 octane.

Some things that make you say hmmmmm: Why have power sliders but not offer a power liftgate??? Also, the shifter is too long and often blocks the manual radio controls-which I never use due to the steering controls. the engine gets really loud when pushed, some like the throaty sound-I don't particularly care for it. The engine however has ample power for passing, climbing and cruising. Wind noise is a bit excessive and crosswinds can make the tiny van drift. All in all things that disappear when I think of how much I paid for it!!!

Things that we adore: The fold down rear seat is a MUST and the mid row Captain's chairs can be slide together to form a bench without removing the chairs. Also the rear seat can be a tailgate seat-came in handy many times for picnics and outings. The Mid row seats can be removed with relative ease and with the third row down, we were able to put in 4 Dining Chairs, a bench and an ottoman. there are also tiedown hooks on the floor and grocery hooks in the storage compartment behind the third row.

Our MPV has been a great van for our family of four and actually is very fun to drive. It has been a pleasure to own and I highly recommend this van-unfortunately, the vastly improved MPV is not coming stateside for '07, In my opinion, this is a big mistake for Mazda....But that is slightly biased!!!