I’ve had my little Mazda 3 since February 2005.  It was purchased new to replace a company ute (two seats wasn’t good for the family) and was paid for with a car allowance from my employer at the time.  When I picked it up from Dandenong Mazda it had just 5km on the clock (odometer), back then I was working in the Western suburbs of Melbourne and doing about 140km every day, so it didn’t take long to tick over 100,000km in September 2007.

The next six digit milestone on the speedo took a bit longer, after changing jobs to work local, doing less than 10km a day.  200,000km rolled around on the digital odometer in July 2012.

Since 2012 another new job now has me doing around 80km daily, but the car has also had several big roadtrips.  The Mazda has been to Broken Hill twice (returning via Peterborough, SA, on one of those), Sydney twice (one via Bathurst and Canberra), another separate run to Canberra, Warnambool, Hamilton, Yarram and lots of other places in between.

This week the Mazda reached 300,000km, and I reckon I’ve driven more than 299,000 of those my self.  The car has been pretty reliable, and despite being pretty slack with the servicing, it hasn’t really let me down.  Along the way I’ve had a front strut replaced and two air-con compressors changed.  I’ve replaced the battery, numerous headlight globes and the boot release no longer works.

Now that my eldest son is learning to drive, my Mazda will probably get passed onto him when he gets his licence.  I have no idea what I’d replace it with, but hopefully something just as reliable.

100,000km, September 2007

Mazda 200,000km July 2012

300,000km April 2016

My little Mazda 3

Read why the Mazda was lucky to make it this far… simonyeo.id.au/throttle-on-a-thread