Hi people

Couple of weeks away from my beautiful VR 8.

Please help me with one thing. Which items / parts show the most wear in the interior of the car so that I am extra careful with those? And what can I do to avoid that?

And how good is the quality of Mazda's plastics compared, say, to Acuras or Toyotas?

Thanks

 

The silver trim between you and the shifter has to be the worst....

...the little dangler that lowers the glovebox slowly is also quite delicate :o

S

 

I've had to replace my temperature control **** twice already. Pretty flimsy.

 

Coin case for sure... That must be made of some space age material cuz its so lite and so easily breakable.

 

The edge of the bucket seats when you get in/out. You tend to kind of press into it when rolling out, and it rubs up against the airbag segment.

That and the plastic trim on the bottom of the door sill. When I first got the car, I tended to accidently scuff it with my shoes because it the car was so low.

Also, the box in the center console, I have never broken it, but I dont suggest using it as a "pushing point" when getting out of the car.

Now I use the steering wheel to kind of haul myself out and it works well, I don't really touch/scuff anything. And now that I know to raise my shoes a bit when moving my feet out of the veichle, I don't scuff anything anymore either.

 

The rubber ribbing that is on the seats. I put some heavy boxes loaded with books in the back seats and now the ribbing has stretch marks. The plastic/rubber trim on the door scuff pretty easily (although my driver's side is clean since I am careful, stupid passengers)

 

Do not place any weight on the center console lid when getting in / out of the vehicle. The tabs break very (too) easily.

 

I agree with the ribbing on the seats. Mine is starting to wear down on the driver's side...and I only just turned 18,000 miles...the dealership said it wouldn't be covered since I am past the 12,000 mile break in period.
Has anyone here had this problem?

 

Those are also the key things I look out for as well.

#1 for me has got to be the door sills. My car was on the showroom floor and had a scuff on the sill when I bought it, but it was replaced by the dealer the next day. Funny thing happened, after replacing the part, the guy who was driving the car from the garage to the lot for me scuffed it again! So back inside it went for yet another replacement part.

Since then, I've always been super cautious about lifting my feet when entering the car, tell all my passengers to do the same. I even tape a card board on the sill to protect it when I bring it to the dealer for maintenance.

Aside from that, others have listed the sun visors as fragile, so I treat those with kid gloves too. My car is well over a year old and my interior is still perfect as new!

 

Two years old + little kids and my car's interior still looks good; pretty much new. But I am always careful to wrap cloth around items that I carry in there, I vacuum it regularly, and when something breaks I get it replaced under warranty. (The broken items were the rear cupholder door hinge, the ashtray spring attachment point and the front console sliding door retaining tab.)

 

Yup. Mine's been replaced. It's just *barely* strong enough to rest your arm there when driving. Anything more and... SNAP.

 

My center console lid needs to be replaced also. I'm just waiting until I take it in for the recall work. My shift **** also has a little bit of play in it that I'm going to get them to address.