Mazda 3 is a global car, sharing technology and components with both the upcoming Volvo S40 and the European Ford Focus. It's like a talent co-op. People say component sharing makes cars all the same but it's not so. Mazda developed the engines and transmissions, Volvo did the chassis and safety, and Ford did the suspension design. The suspension tuning was back in Mazda's hands, worked out at their rolling Hiroshima test track. Each manufacturer did what it does best, and the result is the best of three worlds.
Mazda 3 is a couple inches longer, wider and taller than the old Protege. A lot of work went into the new unibody chassis, which is 40 percent more rigid than the Protege's. Mazda had a bare chassis on display at the vehicle's introduction, painted different colors to designate features pertaining to safety and beefy structure. In a head-on collision the front of the chassis is designed to redirect energy to the outside rails, and not down the center toward the front seats. The steering column is crushable and the pedals are designed to retract away from the driver's feet.

The standard cloth interior is sturdy, in blue or red check with leather at the edges. The leather is smooth and black and a well-priced option compared to other cars. The seats have adequate bolstering, but when Mazda's performance arm, Mazdaspeed, makes a version of the Mazda 3 it should have racier seats. Power seats aren't available, but who needs them in a car this small? There is adjustable lumbar support, and the hip position is elevated, reducing front legroom a touch, but providing excellent forward visibility as well as a very tidy relationship with the pedals and especially the short shift lever. There's no dead pedal, but the outside of the driver's right shin rests comfortably on the edge of the center stack. In the rearview mirror of the five-door, the two rear headrests and the center brake light (CHMSL) intrude a little bit into window space.

The three-spoke leather steering wheel feels great in the hands, and the control buttons (cruise control, sound system) have a positive feel. There's an attractive faux carbon fiber horizontal strip on the panel, while the dashboard shelf is golf ball grainy, not unlike the new Cadillacs, although Mazda says it was the Porsche Boxster they were trying to copy.
The glovebox is not only huge (9 quarts), but the door is dampened and it has its own light. There's a deep but not long console under the driver's right elbow, and between the seats are two built-in cupholders with a neatly hinged cover in black plastic. The cupholders have a canal between them so other things such as a cellphone can be stored and easily reached there.

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Cargo space with the seats folded flat in the five-door is 31.2 cubic feet. We came out of an Ikea store with an unassembled table in a flat box measuring 48 inches long and 30 inches wide, and it slid neatly in the back of the five-door with the 60/40 fold-down rear seat flattened. Flipping the seats down is easy. We reached in from behind, pressed down on one small square button on each side, and aneasy shove forward dropped each seat flat. A separate compartment is hidden under the floor.

The three big gauges are dead ahead for the driver, but they're awfully busy down in the tunnels where they effectively hide from the glare of the sun. They are electroluminescent, which means day or night the numbers are lit in reddish-orange. Even without the color the 140-mph speedometer is busy, with hash marks and a smaller kilometer measure with more hash marks inside the mph numbers. The dash panel looks better at night than day, with the reddish-orange lighting having its chance to be seen. There are glowing rings around most of the dials including the cigarette lighter, in kind of a dull maroon.

There are 12 new colors, some of which look almost metalflake, for example the new Solar Yellow Mica, probably just as bright but not quite as bold as the Protege5 yellow.