I think Mazda is one of the exceptions. Plus, they have great driving dynamics in general.

Only thing stopping me from getting a new Miata is all the dangerous bro-dozers on the road.

Meh - with a Miata you just zip out of their way. Miata owner since 1998 and I even survived commuting for 22 years in Northern VA. Life is too short - get and enjoy a Miata!

I was also a Miata owner: An NB Madzaspeed. A lot of fun to drive, and it's nimbleness saved me from a couple of crazy accidents. Unfortunately the car has one major weakness: It doesn't matter if the car is very agile if you are surrounded by vehicles with far worse characteristics. The car was rammed 3 times in 12 years, either on the side or the back, by people in brodozers that either couldn't see it on the side, or had crappy braking performance. The person in front of me does an emergency-level stop, and with the Miata I stop too, 3 feet before I hit them. 3 seconds later The brodozer behind me, however, has failed to brake, and launches the Miata forward. I walk out fine, the car in front of me gets very minor damage, as I was stopped and with my foot on the brake pedal, but the Miata's frame is bent, and the repair estimate is over 5k.

So yeah, hell is other cars

Exactly this. And worse - I'm worried the lifted brodozer would come up onto the Miata and crush me. It's too bad, they are wonderful cars. At least we can still track 'em.

It's the times where I can't zip out of the way that I'm worried about. The these mall-crawler truck-bros really are obnoxious and intentionally aggressive towards small cars. I'll stick to my track only race car with full cage and fire suppression system.

I wonder how the car would respond to having the sat antenna run through with a 1/2 inch drill bit? Would that solve the problem?

Just unplug the cellular modem. I have three "dumb" cars and I'm going to continue to baby the crap out of them. I have zero interest in anything new. Maybe a Mazda if push came to shove.

Easier said than done. Where is that located? Is there a service manual that explains where that part is?

There's a good chance the modem is on its own fuse. There's also a good chance the modem is 4g only, so whenever that gets shutdown, it will be trackerless. :D

I have some information on that I ran accross:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askcarsales/comments/15nkbh3/new_ca...

https://old.reddit.com/r/CX50/comments/126aepa/mazda_connect...

There’s a few threads linked in the top discussion (you may need to expand the massively downvoted responses, and some are deleted), but Mazda is known to use tracking data to deny warranty claims and share that data with insurers.

I was also stunned to learn salespeople’s commission is denied if they don’t get you on the app! Absolutely wild.

I had a close in-law that had a total braking failure with their ~2017 Mazda Cx-9, which was one thing, but then the dealer was pretty horrible about acknowledging or even diagnosing it. In the end, they sold it off early instead of continuing to own it with the unknowns on the brakes. So it's an anecdote, but one that makes me look pretty seriously against Mazda - though maybe it was more the dealer than the company.

It's hard to say. Of course the OEM should care what their dealers do and how they treat customers, but ultimately the dealers decide how they are going to handle things.

I haven't had any failures on any of our Mazdas so far (2013 CX-5, though only had it for 2 years. I change cars like clothes, 2014 CX-5 - spouse had for ~70k / 6 years, 2015 Mazda 3 - had for 27k / 6 years). Only issue I had was a battery that died during the pandemic, and it didn't really die - I was able to nurse it back to health and then it kept working through when I sold the car 3 years later. All that to say, I haven't been able to test our dealership with a major failure. But the buying experience did exceed what we experienced at the other dealerships we visited (Hyundai, Chevrolet - lots of unwanted sales contact and in person pressure.)

Honestly it could have been something as simple as a a missed bleed of an air bubble in the brake lines. But this was on a less than 3 yr old car, and its been a while since we last discussed it, & I don't recall if they had any sort of brake service where that would be a possibility - either way after a scare like that, one expects your car maintainer (in this case the dealer) to be open to a bit of diagnostic work - even if only to maintain good relations for future purchases.

You can disable the connected services from the settings. It still has an annoying pop-up every time you start the car to enable them.

More details here, see page 77. PDF warning.

https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/pdf/owners-optimized/opt...