My family purchased our first Mazda3 from Downsview Auto. Nothing majorly went bad with the car, and the experience was fine. We lucked out.

I was shopping for a Mazda a few weeks ago, and I went to Downsview Auto to check out their inventory. The sales guy I was working with gave me quite an intimate tour of their facilities. The reason why they have so many of these cars, and at aggressive prices, is because they get these cars from Quebec for cheap and perform extensive rehabilitation on them. If you go to their dealership, go to the east end of that same plaza (effectively, the "back" of the plaza) and you'll see a ton of their cars that are pre-sale condition, that have not yet gone through their rehab process.

Each car goes through body work, mechanical work, detailing, before it's ready to be sold. A lot of the Gen1's will have Bondo work done to cover up the rust.

This in itself is not exactly bad, but you're gambling on their rehabilitation work to be quality (due to the tight margins in the used car market, it won't be), their mechanical rehabilitation work to be quality (again, same consideration), and the car's unique history that you won't exactly know because they sell you the car "patched up".

The lack of test drive is a risk to take, as a mechanical inspection can only reveal so much .

If you have time before purchasing a MS3, try to buy one privately and try to buy it as close to possible as trade-in value. Try to buy a car that is honest, that hasn't had anything done to it to try and conceal its history. All used cars have faults, and a history, and the more you know about it the better you're able to make your decision as to what risks you're willing to take, and what you're not.