This is my daughters car and I was doing some maintenance on it when I heard a weird noise. I actually thought the car had started. I tracked the noise down to the drivers side headlight and when I researched it I discovered many people have complained about this issue. Apparently it's caused by either a failing cooling fan or failing adaptive headlight leveling motor.

People complain that it requires a new headlight costing $1800 to $2000 to replace. Many people had theirs replaced under warranty but others complain that it happened soon after the warranty expired. I'm not exactly sure when my daughters headlight problem started but she says it's been making the noise for a quite awhile. From what I read online this is a known problem that Mazda should fix via recall.

If the other headlight goes out we're talking approximately a total of $4000 to fix....which is outrageous in a 5 year old car. We've owned 3 new Mazda's but this will be the last one unless Mazda steps up and admits the problem and fixes it under a recall.