1974 Mazda 1300 Deluxe review from Australia and New Zealand

Car would overheat when I first bought it, but it just needed a tune to fix this.

The head gasket blew at about 85,000 miles, but I still drove it for another few thousand before I replaced it with a new one.

A valve got stuck at 99,000 miles so I had to take the head off again and clean it.

The usual dashboard cracks from Aussie summers, worn seats and rust in some panels and the bottom of the doors.

This car was a very cheap car in its day, but it is very well built (better than some modern cars) and has a lot of standard accessories (more than some modern cars, e.g. Hyundai Excel). It is ultra reliable and has a strong motor, as you would expect from Japanese cars of this era.

The power and torque figures are good and the car is quite light which makes it pretty nimble on the road and gives you a go-kart feel. I have overtaken many six cylinder cars up steep hills in this car.

Some would say that the car is pretty dull looking and others have called it a piece of crap. But if these people had ever driven one of these cars they would change their mind I think.

Also the look of the car is somewhat classic I think, and reflects a bygone time when cars were built to last.