It's got a lot of miles on it and is quite old. Nothing obviously wrong with it, though. Check for rust and chain rattle but I suspect it's mostly just going to be down to luck.

Not sure about the MX3, but be aware that on some 4wd cars you have to change all 4 tyres at a time, as buying only a pair will mess up the 4wd system.

I'll back this up.

Last week had a large nail, in the middle of the tread (phew), of one the new set of all season tyres fitted to our Forester last year, to collect the now repaired tyre i put one of the old winter set onto the rear of the car, side by side there's maybe just over 1/4" in height difference between that winter tyre and the new set, hardly worth worrying about one would think, wrong.

Even though its only a mile each way i could feel the transmission didn't like this one bit, turning right at the mini roundabout one of the offside tyres was actually squeaking, bearing in mind the Subaru is a full time 4WD system and thankfully robust (i believe the rear diff is also LSD on the XT model but happy to be corrected), i took this as object confirmation that the advice to keep all 4 tyres as identical as possible on AWD systems is good advice...similarly it would make sense for 2WD cars to have identical tyres on the drive axle for similar reasons, no point in making diffs work harder than they need to.

By identical i mean as well as tread depth, type and tread pattern should be as close as possible.

Do you really need 4W drive and sport spec?

I would spend the money on lower spec in return for fewer miles and/or newer.

I was wondering about whether the OP needs 4wd myself, but there are very few cheap CX3's to choose from. Excluding diesels and ins. write-offs, the next two cheapest CX3 on Autotrader (both lower spec and 2wd) are £4995 and £5k respectively, the cheaper of them doesn't look like its been cleaned at all and both seem to be showing more signs of interior wear despite having quite a bit less miles (115 and 120k).

Next cheapest after those two (and cheapest under 100k miles) is £5999, which is a big jump up from the the one the OP is looking at!.

Real Newbie question. I take it 4WD are options that could be 'left-off' as you can on other cars? I would only infrequently need it but wouldn't walk way fro a car because it as it.

Looking at pics of 4wd CX3's, there seems to be no means of "controlling" the 4wd system. So while I'm not 100% certain, I'd guess it to be an "on demand" system. Which basically means the 4wd will only kick in (with no input from you) when needed (i.e, when the front tyres lose grip).

I'm afraid I don't know whether or not that type of system is prone to the issues re tyre described.

‘ Real Newbie question. I take it 4WD are options that could be 'left-off' as you can on other cars? I would only infrequently need it but wouldn't walk way fro a car because it as it.’ No figures to hand, but I’d imagine an AWD CX-3 is a bit of a rarity when compared to the regular FWD offering. I’d expect evonomy and performance to be blunted a little by carrying round a transfer box, propshaft and rear differential that’ll rarely get used.

I believe that the AWD version of the CX-3 on the 2L petrol was an uprated unit to 150PS rather than the standard 120PS unit in the 2WD versions, and so is actually (on paper at least) slightly quicker to 60 than the lower output version. Similarly, on paper, the MPG is about 10% down, but about 15% down using the REAL MPG data.

The AWD version has a CO2 output of 152g/km, which would make a difference to cars registered before 1st Apr 2017 but not from then onwards because of the VED changes.

It runs in FWD under normal conditions, but will send some drive to the rear if it thinks it needs it. One of the parameters is whether or not the wipers are turned on or off. For me, I’d be in a regular FWD version with all season tyres, and be aware, as above, that despite the name this is a car based on a Mazda 2. If you’re looking for a Mazda 3 SUV, you’d need a CX-30.

I test drove a 'standard' CX-3 2L Sport (auto form) back in 2017 and it drove fine, but the smaller cabin basin on the Mazda2 was very apparent. It should also ben noted that whilst the standard car comes with a 350L boot, the AWD version has only a 287L boot, presumably because some of the space in taken up by the AWD system.

Plus it could well be the case that for Sport versions more generally, the spare wheel well is taken up by an upgraded ICE system - not sure.

The SE-L is well equipped, similar to the Mazda3, just a bit less - not sure if it has heated front seats like the 3 in that spec. It does have climate controlled A/C though.