My daughter's 2006 Mazda 3S is up to 55K miles.

The front tires are severely warn on the inside. See the photo. Is this caused by poor alignment - probably camber out of adjustment? I've never seen tire wear this bad. The tires are the stock 205-50 17 size. Bridgestones. Stock suspension.

What has been the experience with Mazda 3's as they get into higher mileage? What are the common problems?

Thanks for the info.

 

Probably the rear camber. The 3 has a significant amount of negative rear camber which, without aftermarket parts, is non-adjustable. It's set up this way to give good handling through corners but does impact tire life.

For this reason it's really important to be able to fully rotate the tires through all four corners and to do it every 5,000 miles or so..... more often if she drives very aggressively. Doing so will help spread the wear out more evenly even if it doesn't stop the problem wear itself. Try to make sure you get non-unidirectional tires since those really need to stay on one side of the car and aren't supposed to be rotated to the opposite side of the car.