K3nnis, I was in the same boat as you, tossing up between the Mazda and the Honda. I felt that the presentation of the Euro, particularly the interior, was miles ahead of he Mazda, plus you got more standard equipment with the Euro.
My car is a manual and has 4,000k's on it and I don't think it has the pinging noise. The reason I say I don't think it has the issue is because a passenger the other day asked what the rattling noise was. They only heard it once, so I don't know if it was an isolated thing

