Buying a Mazda3 For The First Time

[stugautz]

Hi Guys

It's my first time buying a new car and I've got a question for the forum. What kind of added protection is available and who here has bought them. Stuff like extended warranties and rust protection

[TheProfessor]

You should really search, only a few posts above yours is this:

http://www.torontomazda3.ca/forum/sh...ad.php?t=13181

[IMHIP2]

Each person and their needs are different. Since we usually keep our cars for 5 or more years I always opt for rust protection but not from the dealer. I always take the cars to Krown within the few weeks of ownership and then annually in the fall. MZ3 went last Friday.

As for extended warranty I did not buy it with the MZ3 or any of the other new cars I have purchased over the years with the exception of my 91 Accord. That was a huge waste of money in my opinion but for some it may be the price for peace of mind motoring. I would rather gamble that my new car will be trouble free and will not require any major repair and if it turns out to be a lemon I would flip it before the warranty is up.

[Unoriginalusername]

take the $2k you'd spend on the extended warranty and put it in a bank account or towards your mortage.... it's going to take 3-5 years for your standard warranty to expire based on normal driving before you'd have to tap into the warranty... the money would be worth about $3k invested or even more against a mortage in terms of interest savings over 25 years.

long story short, companies make their money on extended warranty as do car dealers. McDonalds loses money on hamburgers but the would you like fries with that approach gives them a great ROWC (return on working capitol)... car dealers are much the same, thin margins with a few back end rebates on the car itself with all the money to be had in dealer installed options and extended warranties. not to say the consumer doesn't come out ahead sometimes, but in general you're just giving your money away imo

[samsvoc]

I've been a happy owner of a new MZ3 GT for the past week and I'm loving it. I didn't buy the ex warranty because the Protege5 that I traded in, had 168,000km on the clock and the only thing to go wrong was the EGR valve. All I had to spend was $200. Car was good as new. What a great car. I hope luck strikes twice. Happy motoring, and save your $$$$.

[Jeff-TheBiz]

To each his own...

I got both, and not because I got em cheaper.

[ecokenny]

Extended warranty is a rip in most cases in a consumer point of view. Manufacturer must have acturial calculation to figure out the average total repair bills of all vehicle in that category (ie mazda 3). I must say there must be at least 50% of the vehicles does not require that X amount of money to fix their cars during that course of the warranty period to allow the manufacturer to come out on top in the long run (called the Law of Large Number). Also, manufacturer would add a premium on top to decrease the likelihood of the costs of the repair would dip into their profit.

Having said that, I normally purchase extended warranty because I drive aggressively and my vehicle has a tendency of encountering so many problem down the road. Like my 99 Protege ran into so much problem simple as replacing X number of stabilizer bars to gasket leakage. I believed we paid about $700-800 for 120k warranty back then and the benefit had soon paid off the cost of the warranty.

[mazda lover]

take the $2k you'd spend on the extended warranty and put it in a bank account or towards your mortage.... it's going to take 3-5 years for your standard warranty to expire based on normal driving before you'd have to tap into the warranty... the money would be worth about $3k invested or even more against a mortage in terms of interest savings over 25 years.

long story short, companies make their money on extended warranty as do car dealers. McDonalds loses money on hamburgers but the would you like fries with that approach gives them a great ROWC (return on working capitol)... car dealers are much the same, thin margins with a few back end rebates on the car itself with all the money to be had in dealer installed options and extended warranties. not to say the consumer doesn't come out ahead sometimes, but in general you're just giving your money away imo

Good advice...great post...stay away from that tar junk the dealers want to try and sell you for rust proofing..in fact don't buy anything extra the dealer wants to sell you..JMO