Not normal. I have a Hyundai and take it in for regular maintenance. No big issues aside from that. A taillight went out and had to be replaced at around the five year mark.

That said, we only use the car for neighborhood & weekend driving. DH & I take public transit to & from work each day. Car is used for school/daycare drop-offs and weekend family stuff - we're definitely light car users, so maybe we'd have more issues by now if we were heavier users.

Sell the Mazda and get something else. Those are not normal problems. I loved the Mazda3 I had, no problems at all. Most modern cars are pretty reliable. I would just chalk it up to luck on this one.

Anonymous wrote:I would also contact Mazda directly and file a complaint even if the warranty covered the work. That way you at least have started a paper trail for the next big thing that goes wrong. I had head gasket issues with a Subaru and had to pay for it out of pocket. I contacted Subaru and they worked with the dealer to get me a discount.

This. I've owned 3 Mazdas and have never had issues like this. My current has well over 100k miles and I'm just getting into issues that aren't typical maintenance.