Brake pads OEM BMW or OEM Mazda
Have yet to find a better street pad than BMW's OE compound. Ceramics dust less but feel terrible.
Back in March I got fed up with the B5 platform shenanigans and started shopping for a Subaru... Upon entering the Mazda dealer, I got the typical \"We don't have the exact one you want in manual, but we do have this...\" and I decided to humor the salesman. Lo and behold, a 2012 Mazdaspeed 3 appeared before me... With 263 ponies and 280 ft/pounds of I could dead, the MS3 has proven itself to be the best possible car that a 23 year old male could own.
Great cars. They like to eat brakes in regular intervals. With 70k make sure there is no front end shimmy that is the result in worn control arm bushings/warped brake rotors.
Brakes are excellent
The OEM brake pads were painfully inadequate for anything more than street driving. Interestingly enough, the rest of the brake components were designed very good and they have a lot of capacity. A simple pad upgrade and brake fluid flush proved sufficient for more serious track days.
On a positive note- the brakes were sporty car firm and easy to modulate even with these tires.
The way the brakes begin to grumble during heavy braking is less impressive, but they work well enough.
The bigger brakes are strong, but the gearbox is obstructive. Steering response is instant and - to your eyes anyway - the MPS corners flat and hard. But wide, high, soft part-bucket seats send the opposite message to your brain , giving the uncomfortable impression the car is rolling in corners.
In my experience the OEM Mazda Miata "Value" brake pads have absolutely horrible initial bite characteristics and require much more pedal pressure to achieve a given level of deceleration than aftermarket performance oriented brake pads.
the steering lacks the consistent weighting and tactile communication that a Porsche offers. For a car this rapid, it's not as talkative as it should be. We've also got reservations about the brakes. Our test car was fitted with competition-grade brake pads to cope with track use, but they still faded badly after a handful of hard laps.
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