Great car for the Money

Now over 17 months I have had this car and its still perfect not a single problem other than the trunk keyhole has some rust on it as wel las the Mazda nameplate on the trunk but mazda service cleaned it right up. Unfortunatly they have discontinued the Protege and now replaced it with the Mazda 3. I have had this car maxed at 130 mph it ahndles high speeds very very well and you don't really feel like you are even speeding until 110mph. For $12k this car was quite a bargin and now you coudl pick one up at a dealer used for about $8000 or $9000 I would recomend getting a LX or ES tho the options are not that much more and a tacometer would be great. I recently went to buy a 2003 ES but they wanted to much for a year old car even tho it only had 6 miles so didn't go with it.

My car is now up to 27,000 miles getting about 30 mpg even goign 80mph average to work 40 miles on the highway. The tires are not the greatest for snow but the car handles well and is very easy to play with and know exactly where it is going to go. Very Very happy with this car and would recommend to anyone but of coarse you can no longer get a new one a 2003 would be great will update if I ever have a problem with it :)


Update 06/10/2003:

Ok have had the car for 11 months now. It is still great not one mechanical or otherwise problem just broke 15,000 miles last week. Main issue I have with it is the First gear is quite low and in general you have to rev the engine pretty loud to get it to shift smooth but without a tachometer, not sure how high it really is. If you do buy a Protégé I do suggest you spring for at least the LX. But if all you can afford is the DX it is a great car I do believe the cheapest of its kind. I think it is comparable to a Honda Accord at a fraction of the price and with a better warranty.

I had a piece of plywood bounce off the side of it nice thick 3/4" Oak piece to and it barley dinged it and didn’t scratch it at all can't even find the ding now so that’s a wonderful thing. I do wish you could shut off the airbags though . One more thing is the center console storage/armrest is way to small to fit most things in and gets very dirty and is hard to clean although it may be from my dogs paws on it al lthe time but is still hard to clean regardless.

In short on the update car is great would recommend to anyone at this price level to buy nothing else but a Mazda Protégé.

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End of Update
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To start off my last car was a, 1995 Dodge neon was a good car for the money had it for about 18 months. So my car dealer called me up and offered me the 0% APR, I didn't qualify and ended up getting 4.9% and lowed to a DX instead of the sweet LX one with moon roof and whatnot.

Onto the car itself, its interior seems a bit more crowded than the neon in the front but i think its just the lack of the huge dodge dash. The seating is definitly more comfortable and they wipe off easy. 30 minutes after I had it my dog puked on the front seat wiped right off can't even tell it happened.

I got the 5 speed never drove one before but wanted one. It has a very easy clutch and is very easy to learn on. It moves nice and when it idles you can't even tell its running. Steering is a bit touchy it seems but handles nice once you adjust yourself. One thing that I really thought was odd is the manual pull up antena no big deal can just always leave it up but was odd it wasn't automatic even on the top models.

Now I have not had this car long enough to know much about it and will follow up later in its life but so far its great, altho would like a tachometer and all the options of the LX the DX does jsut fine for me for now. I have had it now for 5 days and put 190 miles on it at about 28 mpg with a good mix of city and country driving. I do wish they would not put the front licence plate thing on like they do with just drilling holes in the plastic I can’t remove it cause there are two decent sized holes in the front bumper when its off.