3 Navi brand

[DHB]

Can anyone tell me what brand of factory installed Navi is used in the 3?

[DougMacD]

It's by Navtech (which just changed it's name's spelling to Navteq), the same folks who do the cartography for Yahoo!Maps.

http://www.navteq.com/

The system is pretty nice and has helped me get around a couple of times. It's ideal for finding alternate routes while driving (not suggested by manufacturer) using the POS button and the system set to display based on the car's direction of travel vs North-up. If you can read a map quickly (and grasp where the heck you are in the tangle of streets), you can use the system to find the next main street in a mess of industrial parks, avoid one-way mishaps, and find that frickin' freeway on-ramp.

However, the directional nav assistance (calculation of shortest route and step-by-step directions), is a bit clunky. The voice can be annoying, especially if you wind up on a stretch of road or highway that's been recently built (i.e., the 210 FWY extension between the 57 and the 15) and isn't on the 2003 DVD the Mazda3s came with. It's quite disconcerting when the car's Arrow cursor (indicates car's position on map) flies off the roads and the Voice starts to chant "Calculating reroute..." and "When possible make a legal U-turn..." or can't decide if you should turn left or right in a quarter mile. I almost had to sedate my sister's boyfriend who was in the back seat squirming with anxiety (backseat driver) on the way to Indio/Palm Desert when we 'went off the Map'. We made it fine... and the Navigation system eventually calmed down and recalculated the route once we returned to a stretch of highway it had on its DVD disc.

Oh...and it's really only a map/GPS system, so don't expect the 'estimated driving times' to be very accurate. It doesn't take into account traffic, time of day (like rush hour), or Sig Alerts. If it did have the ability to take all that into account through some sort of regional Wi-Fi network, it would be invaluable! And if it was 'smart' and learned your preferred short-cuts vs highways when selecting its 'shortest route' it would be better still.

Hope that sheds some light on the Nav system that the dealers rarely know anything about.
Good Luck.
-Doug

[rjs]

I am in Canada and my Dealer knew nothing about the Nav system at all. But for some reason it is not available in Canada. The dealer was not able to explain why it was not available in Canada it just is not, I suspect it is lack of map coverage.


I am looking at putting in some sort of aftermarket system.

[SED]

It is all about pricing... there are NAVs in Canada, not for Mazda though...

HAS ANYONE SEEN AN AFTER MARKET NAVI SYSTEM FOR THE 3 IN THE STATES, IM ALSO TRYING TO FIND A DASHBOARD KIT THAT LOOKS LIKE THE DEALER ONE.