Why Nobody Talks About The Precidia Mx-3 Anymore
The Miata ate every interesting story Mazda tried to tell in the nineties. The MX-3 existed, it was competent, and it sold poorly enough that most people don't know it happened at all. I found this out the hard way when I bought one in 2019 for a project that ended up taking fourteen months longer than expected because nobody makes replacement parts for a car that was never popular. Here's what actually happened. Mazda built the MX-3 on a shortened platform shared with the Familia/Protegé. It came with either a 1.6-liter four or the 1.8-liter V6. The V6 version made about 140 horsepower and weighed roughly 2,500 pounds. That numbers game sounds reasonable on paper. The real problem was how Mazda packaged it. The seats were bucket-style shells mounted directly to the floor, the rear visibility was abysmal, and the steering rack had that vague, numb character you'd expect from something tuned for fuel economy rather than engagement. Meanwhile the Miata dropped the same year and offered something genuinely special. Lightweight, rear-wheel drive, a manual transmission that actually felt good to use. The MX-3 was Mazda's compromise car for people who wanted a sporty look without giving up practicality. That compromise is exactly why it vanished.
What You're Actually Getting
If you're considering an MX-3, understand what kind of car this is before you spend money on it. It's a front-wheel-drive coupe with a V6 option, not a driver's car in the Miata sense. The chassis is rigid enough, the handling is predictable, and at 60 mph on a highway it feels secure. It will not surprise you the way a borrowed Miata might. The 1.6 four-cylinder variant, known internally as the ES model, is the more common one. It struggles to move the car quickly and the automatic transmission that came with it is particularly sluggish. The manual versions exist but are rarer. The V6 ES models, often called EV in North America, are the ones people actually want now. They're still not fast by modern standards. Zero to sixty takes about nine seconds if the car is healthy and the tires aren't completely bald. I learned this while trying tomerge onto a freeway in Montana. The V6 accelerated but the gap to the traffic behind me disappeared faster than I expected. I almost stalled the merge because I'd been thinking in Miata terms about how the car should behave. It doesn't. It behaves like a sensible appliance that occasionally wants to be driven harder than it should be.
The Specific Problems Nobody Warns You About
The biggest issue with these cars isn't mechanical. It's electrical, and it's specific to the V6 models from 1992 to 1995. The ignition switch on the steering column develops an internal fault where the contacts wear unevenly. The symptom is intermittent no-start conditions that come and go for weeks, then appear all at once when you need the car. You'll turn the key and hear nothing. Sometimes it works if you wiggle the key slightly or apply pressure to the steering column cover. This isn't a common knowledge problem among owners because most people replace the battery, then the starter, then the alternator before someone finally mentions the ignition switch. My workaround involved removing the steering column covers and tracing the wiring back to the switch. I ended up bypassing the faulty contacts entirely with a relay that I wired to a constant power source and triggered from the key position. It's not pretty under the dash, but the car starts reliably now. The relay costs about eight dollars. The two hours of labor you save by knowing this problem exists beforehand is worth considerably more than whatever you paid for the car. There are other issues. The rear subframe bolts on the V6 models crack over time due to stress concentration. You'll hear clunks over bumps. Inspect the mounting points before buying anything. The V6 motor mounts also degrade and cause excessive vibration at idle that owners sometimes mistake for a misfire. If the engine shakes noticeably when you're stopped in drive and the shifter is in gear, check the mounts before pulling any codes.
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Parts Availability And What To Expect
Body panels for the MX-3 are nearly impossible to find new. The rear quarter panels, door skins, and bumpers all require hunting through junkyards or importing from Japan. Interior trim pieces follow the same pattern. If your console is cracked or your window switch is broken, you're looking at aftermarket fabrication or a donor car. I spent three months searching for a working center stack for my EV and eventually 3D printed replacement pieces for the button housings. Mechanical parts are easier but not cheap. Mazda stopped supporting this platform years ago. Engines and transmissions come from breakers who charge increasingly high prices as supply shrinks. Suspension components are available through catalogs like RockAuto for the front suspension, but the rear multi-link setup uses proprietary bushings that are harder to source. Some of those bushings have been reproduced by smaller manufacturers, but the reproduction quality varies significantly between suppliers.
Is It Worth Doing Anything With These Cars?
Only if you have a specific reason. The MX-3 is not a Miata alternative. It serves a different purpose entirely. It's a comfortable daily driver that looks different from everything else on the road. The V6 gives you enough power for casual cruising and the interior space actually works for adults, unlike the Miata's back seat which is strictly for storage or very small children. Investment potential is limited. Prices have crept up slightly from the bottom but there's no bubble forming. These cars will remain obscure because they were obscure when new and most people who drove them replaced them with something more memorable. If you want a project that has community support, forums, and a parts supply chain, get a Miata or a RX-7 instead. If you want a quiet weekend car that rewards patience and resourcefulness, the MX-3 might be worth your time. The ones that survive in decent condition are mostly in the hands of people who inherited them or bought them for a few hundred dollars and decided to keep them running. That's probably the right approach. Don't pay more than a couple thousand for one unless it's already been fixed properly and you have documentation to prove it. Everything else is just hope with a price tag attached to it.
