Faults:

The whole time I had the car, my oil seemed to burn off.

I am due to replace the catalytic converter soon.

New exhaust at 155,000 miles ($452.28).

New rear brake cylinders, and front and back brakes at 165,000 miles ($728.42).

New tires yearly (the tire size is hard to find).

The cloth that lines the ceiling is falling down.

Rear sway bars loose and hanging down.

General Comments:

The car is a very good "kid" car, school car. Not meant for road trip driving.

I paid $2,000 for it and put about $1,500 into it for a total of $3,500/3.5 years. Not bad. I still drive it and it has its problems; my advice is band-aid it up as cheap as you can, and drive it into the ground.

Faults:

Car wouldn't go into gear at the dealership - they knew it had a transmission problem - they told me - but the car was only $1800 - I drove it in first gear to a trans shop a mile away - they said the fluid had leaked out - they put fluid in it and stopped the leaking. The car runs fine now, except that it drops down to 500 RP-Ms at idle in drive, and lurches into gear unless you goose up the idle to 800 - then it takes off fine - I will have to turn up the idle.

General Comments:

Car runs fine and the engine seems to be OK.

I have read about these trans problems - I had a Ford LTD with an auto overdrive - if you drive an O/D car in O/D all the time, the trans WILL go out.

BUT, this 626 goes into O/D by default every time you turn it on - then you have to push the O/D button to take it out of O/D.

I think a lot of these 626 trans problems are caused by driving the car in O/D all the time.

Faults:

- New front tires (probably because the tires were completely bald due to misalignment).

- 4 wheel alignment.

- Cooling system flush (bad maintenance by previous owner).

- New battery twice (twice in the space of 6 months. Bad alternator might have been the reason for killing the first new battery).

- New alternator (previous one was just 1-1/2 years old and had just 6000 miles, but was out of the 1 year warranty. I guess it was a case of a bad re-manufactured part).

- New coolant hose (wrong specification hose used previously, could not hold the pressure).

- New CAPS for the radiator & reservoir tanks (wrong specification cap was installed by previous owner).

General Comments:

I owned the car for 6 months and was not happy with it. It has a 6 cylinder engine, which kind of makes the parts organization under the hood very cumbersome. The end result is more labor hours for all fixes, and thereby taking up the repair costs. Even a simple task of replacing the air filter was cumbersome; the box does not come off easy, and you have to squeeze the filter out and in. The water pump is tied to the cam shaft, and hence replacing this part involves removing the timing belt; to me that is not good design, considering that the vehicles have to undergo regular maintenance repairs and replacements, and therefore the maintenance procedures should be kept as simple as possible (this design is found in most Japanese & American cars).

I learned of the transmission problem while I was hunting for a cooling leak fix. You can find mention of this even in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_626#1993. The transmission on my car had not given way, but I could feel it was hard after driving above 10 miles. I think the reason being that the transmission starts getting taxed once the transmission oil heats up and gets thinned. This was clearly evident to me when there was a coolant leak, which was causing overheating, and the transmission would not respond, even with my accelerator floored!

From what I read, you can get an external transmission cooler installed to protect your fragile transmission, and it shouldn’t cost much. But when I checked around with the local Mazda dealers, they didn’t know what I was talking about, and this would mean it isn’t easy to get one installed. The transmission oil & filter change should be done religiously at 30,000 intervals instead of the 60k on other cars. I would be surprised if I found a used car with so much care taken. Also I read that you could reduce the stress on the transmission by using the stick shift (in the automatic) more often, which is when I started using it e.g. when I start from a stand still until the overdrive speed is reached; to climb even mildly upward slopes; 2nd gear in city limits with heavy traffic and crawling speed, etc. This was my first automatic transmission, and hence was not miffed in following these driving tips.

The mileage I got on this car was clocked at 21 MPG (as per manufacturer specifications) in the city. This car could have been designed for a higher mileage, considering what a Camry or Accord of the same age give, and that this car is no bigger or heavier than those.

When I bought the car new, I went on a long drive; a 150 mile trip (both ways included) and didn’t have any problems. I was more concerned about the rumbles and shakes the car was having. I had a wheel alignment done, and it became much smoother, but it would never hold straight, and would veer to one side very mildly. This model has a frozen caster, and I do not know what this implies with relevance to making adjustments and this issue.

I don’t like the blunted corners in the car, and to me it gives the car a bland look. This is evident in all Mazda models, even today, and is not appealing to me.

The plus points of the car are that, it is loaded with stuff like power seat, sunroof, power antenna, ski bag holder for the price.

I would definitely consider a Toyota/Honda/Nissan if I had to choose a Japanese car, and would never buy a Mazda ever again, until proven with time.