Costco To Costco On A Tank Of Gas: The 2016 Mazda 3 S 5-Door Grand Touring

The 2016 Mazda 3 S 5-Door Grand Touring.

Over the past two years and several months, regular TireKicker readers have seen references to Navigator, the best travelling companion known to man.  Well, Navigator is now Mrs. TireKicker, and we decided our kind of honeymoon was a leisurely ten-day trip up California's Highway 1 from Morro Bay (a charming place, but don't book a family vacation based on what you saw in "Finding Dory" without doing some research, Mom and Dad) to Gualala (pronounced wah-LA-la), 356 miles north.  And the car in our possession the day we would leave would be the 2016 Mazda 3 S 5-Door Grand Touring.

So what's that got to do with the Costco to Costco reference in the headline?

Six the Easy Way: The 2016 Mazda 3 S Five-Door Grand Touring with Automatic Transmission

The 2016 Mazda 3 S Five-Door Grand Touring.

A year ago this week, I wrote a rave review of the 2016 Mazda 3 S Five Door Grand Touring.

It had a six-speed manual and I am one of the estimated seven percent of American drivers who know how to drive a stick.  Don't be impressed.  It used to be much, much higher.  But over the decades since I learned, the number of people who learned has dropped like a rock.  That affects sales, of course, and as of now, only 3.9% of cars sold in this country are sold with a manual transmission. Meaning most people buying a Mazda 3 S Five-Door Grand Touring will be buying it with an automatic.

The question is, is it as good?

Gimme Five: The 2015 Mazda 3 S 5-Door Grand Touring

The 2015 Mazda 3 S 5-Door Grand Touring.

The Mazda 3 four-door sedan has held a firm place on the TireKicker's Best Cars list in the right column of this page ever since this generation of Mazda's compact was introduced.  That changes today.  The one to have...is the five-door.