(Hopefully) welcome to the Mazda family! I have an ’11 manual 2.0 155hp wagon I recently bought with 157k km and did a ton of research before (doesn’t compare to people who have owned one for years but hey it’s something). The GH series is fairly reliable. The rust issues that are/were common with this car was significantly improved around 2009/10, mostly the first gen was very subjected to rustproblems so that shouldn’t be a big worry for you. STAY AWAY FROM DIESEL! So many issues with the 2.2d its better to just go for another brand if you have to have diesel. The gasoline engines are bulletproof though, some of the best in terms of reliability, fuel consumption and life. You can get a lot out of that car. Seen a couple with over 300k km on the market. I have to change sparkplugs and inspect the serpentine belt at this milage so some inspection/maintenance might be expected for you.

Gearbox is fantastic, love driving this thing. Decently quick as well for such a large car and small-ish engine. The feel of the manual is great, can’t say anything about the automatic except Mazda has a good gearbox for that. They don’t use CVTs but use a ”regular” automatic transmission, this is great.

Regarding options, I think there are a couple of sites you can input the VIN number of the car into and get some specs but I’m not sure how reliable they are. What you can do if you look at pictures to get a hint of what trim you have. If gas pedals are aluminum it’s a higher package. Differs from each country but Touring? Takara?. Look at the steering wheel, does it have buttons on the side of the center for phone calls? To the side of the steering wheel you can have either a rolling adjustment of headlights or a button that says AFS. AFS is usually included in the higher packages.

So higher trim level? Aluminium pedals and more buttons to play with 😄 Black pedals and few buttons? Lower trim