The Mazda 3 has been a perennial favourite of drivers since it was introduced by Mazda in 2004. Unfortunately, 2007 and 2008 have been trying years for many Mazda 3 owners as they have been repeatedly targeted by thieves exploiting a manufacturers defect.

It turns out that the Mazda 3 can have the door locks popped open and the alarm disabled by a thief using a "barney rubble" simple technique. We won't take the rap for exposing that simple technique here, but suffice to say that thousands of Mazda 3's have been robbed blind, and many have dented doors from both successful and failed entry attempts.

Thieves attempting entry into these target cars are causing expensive damage over and above the theft involved. Even so-called "fixed" mazda 3's are still being targeted.

According to Autoblog "Mazda has been aware of and working on this issue since October of 2006", yet many Mazda owners were not informed of the problem until January, 2008.

The extent of mazda's response to this problem has been to issue a letter to owners (we don't know if all owners get one), then offering owners the chance of taking their Mazda to a dealership to "fix" the problem. This fix apparently consists of installing plates in the doors that brace the structure, and prevent the door lock from being opened by a thief. It is not known how effective this fix is.

Even if the Mazda solution fixes the problem, thieves may still target these cars. The results can be that the thief uses more force than was required to open the door, and expensive dents result. The mazda3 in our case study received $1800 damage to the drivers door in repeated attacks. This was all in a good neighborhood in a Canadian city over the space of a couple months. Most of the damage came after the Mazda dealership fixed the faulty door locks, probably because the thief used excessive force to try to access the car. This car (as with most mazda 3's) was equipped with a factory alarm that failed to trigger.