Auto News 5

As our Four Seasons Mazda 3 prepares to pull out of our garage one last time, the odometer has rolled over the 26,000-mile mark. During its twelve months with us, the Mazda 3 has shown faultless reliability and has aged gracefully. Other than regular maintenance stops at 7500-mile intervals, our red Mazda was always ready to go.

If you have a pulse and access to the Internet these days (the latter doesn't always require the former), you've probably been exposed quite a bit to the Ford Fiesta. The little Ford has been all over Youtube, Twitter, and (shameless plug alert) our own web site. But the Fiesta isn't the only hot subcompact launching this summer. No, we're also being introduced to its cute older sibling, the Mazda 2. Back in 2007, Mazda introduced its slick-looking, youth-friendly hatchback on the same B-segment platform that would spawn the Fiesta. It proved a huge hit in Europe, surpassing 100,000 sales in its first year on the market, and was named World Car of the Year for 2008. We liked it enough to conduct a rare European Four Seasons test on one, and called it a "great car for tough times." But until recently, there were no plans for the car to make it to our market, despite the steadily growing demand for budget-friendly subcompacts. Now Mazda, all but cut off from its sugar daddy in Dearborn (Ford still retains an 13.8 percent share), has decided to crash the Fiesta's party by launching the 2 here this summer.

• The 1940 Packard was the first car to offer factory-installed air-conditioning.
• By 1969, more than half of all new cars sold were equipped with A/C.
• Some brands affixed window decals to promote their air-conditioned automobiles.
• For cars not equipped with factory air, dealer-installed, under-dash units were popular.
• In a 1971 front-page story, the New York Times implicated air-conditioning in the death of the convertible, postulating that: "In the age of air-conditioning, real air has lost its value."
• After the freon used in A/C units was blamed for depleting the ozone layer, automakers were required to switch from R12 to the less harmful R134a refrigerant by 1996.
• Dual-zone automatic climate control allows for separate temperature settings for driver and passenger; some cars have additional zones for rear-seat passengers.
• Volkswagen calls its manual air-conditioning system "Climatic;" automatic A/C is "Climatronic."
• Today, more than 99 percent of all new cars are air-conditioned.
• There's no A/C in base versions of the Chevrolet Aveo; Honda Civic; Hyundai Accent and Elantra; Jeep Wrangler; Kia Forte and Rio; Mazda 3; Mitsubishi Lancer; Nissan Versa; and Toyota Tacoma.
• Testing by Consumer Reports found that using a car's air-conditioner resulted in a more than 3-mpg loss at highway speeds. Driving with the windows open had no measurable effect on fuel economy.

The Honda Pilot is one of those vehicles that you know are popular but that you never really notice. Its mission is one of practicality, not flashiness, and as such it's been very successful for Honda. (In fact, in the month of May, the Pilot outsold the entire Acura division.) Its boxy exterior is anything but eye-catching, and its interior is pleasant but not overly fussy and is filled with lots of useful storage bins. There are other vehicles in this segment - such as the Mazda CX-9 -- that are more attractively styled and are more powerful, but the Pilot manages to outsell the CX-9 more than four to one. The Pilot capitalizes on its reputation for reliability, on the cachet of the Honda name, and, most important, on the fact that it is a very usable vehicle that makes sense for lots of consumers.
Amy Skogstrom