I figured I would share what I've learned recently. A few years back, I purchased a brand new 2021 Mazda 3 Turbo hatchback. I drove it for about a year and thought it was a great daily driver: comfortable, luxury car fit/finish/features, decent handling/solid steering weight & feedback, torquey motor (300+ ft-lbs of torque), AWD, great ergonomics for my frame, very stress-free driving experience and what I believe to be a great overall value for the money. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of buying a first model year car (specifically the Turbo version) and ended up selling the car after a year, mostly due to concerns I had about the car burning quite a bit of oil. Even though the car was brand new, I think it burned it's first quart of oil within ~2500-3000 miles or so. As such, I had my reservations about living with the car long term. So, despite it being a great daily, I sold it (at the right time- for within $500 of what I paid for it brand new!).
Fast forward a few years, I read that Mazda realized they installed some defective valve stem seals in a certain range of their early (mostly 2021) 2.5 Turbo models and was now offering to replace them to quite a few folks online, without issue.
As such, a few weeks ago, I ended up buying a 2021 Mazda 3 Turbo sedan for a great price I couldn't turn down- 1 owner, clean Carfax/no accidents, dealer serviced with only 8000 miles on the clock for barely anymore money than the non-Turbo versions are going for. I considered another hatch (I typically prefer hatches), but went with the sedan this time only because 1) the deal was hard to pass up, and 2) the blindspots on the hatches are massive- by far my biggest complaint with my former hatch.
I could be mistaken, but when looking around the market, I feel like the oil consumption issue might have driven values on some of the turbo models down compared to their NA counterparts.
As irony would have it, a few weeks after buying the Turbo sedan, I received this settlement notification with the VIN for my former hatchback on it (presumably due to me buying it new):
It would appear that Mazda is now willing to replace the faulty valve stem seals, will reimburse you for oil losses and extend your powertrain warranty for an additional 2 years/24,000 miles (from 5 years/60k miles up to 7 years/84k miles). More info here:
https://www.mazdavalvestemsealsettlement.com/
I figured I would share this in the event anyone else on GRM currently owns or plans to buy an early model Mazda with the 2.5 Turbo motor that falls within the specified VIN range. As mentioned, in my local market, the Turbo models (specifically the 2021's) didn't seem to hold their value as well as their NA counterparts, so you might be able to get a solid deal on a turbo version that appears to come with an extended powertrain warranty.
Pics of my new-to-me 2021 Mazda 3 Turbo sedan:
