Buying a Mazda Protege

pwalk · 02-14-03, 12:38

Hi! Thinking about buying a Mazda Protege for my son. 2000 model with 35,000 miles. Anybody have an opinion on Protege's?

Also, anyone know of a Protege Owners web site I can visit for opinions and experiences. Did a litle web searching with no success.............Thank you for your help!!!!!!!

domZ'sp5 · 02-14-03, 04:50

Protege5 with a little over 10,500 miles on it.
So far, I love it!

No problems outside of a leaky rear-window washer nozzle...

Mine is a 2.0L-getting about 28-29 mpg. Handles very well.

Car is geared more toward city driving, as it is "peppy" (i hate that word) from stoplight to stoplight.

For highway driving, not so good - 80 mph = about 4,000 rpm. Increase of gas mileage for highway driving only 2-3 mpg.

check out www.protegeclub.com

DomZ

titus · 02-14-03, 10:40

My daughter has a '95 Protege with 92K miles on it. It has treated her VERY well. Only problem was the drivers' electric window multi-switch failed. Other than that...

'Coupla Mazda forums at: http://www.mazdamp3.com/vbb225/

millikan · 02-26-03, 12:44

Had one for a year and a half. It was a great little car. I love Mazda's standard package.

4DSC · 02-26-03, 04:32

I don't know which model you're considering, but my family came very close to buying an automatic ES last year. We bailed out only because we figured it wasn't financially wise at the time. We test drove a Civic and preferred the Protege because its 2.0 engine felt more responsive. Sure it probably drinks more gas, but it didn't sound as strained as the Civic's 1.7 either. The ES model with the GT package also came with nice 205 width tires on 16" rims. It rode okay and handled pretty well (as far as I could tell with 3 nervous pasengers anyway

).

A lot of Mazdas are overlooked and underrated cars.

medic · 02-26-03, 06:01

i just had an 2002 LX rental with 10K miles and it was nice. i agree, it is quite "spunky" (don't know if that's any beter then "peppy"). The only thing was that the ride seemed a bit stiff as I could feel almost every bump in the road. drive the same stretch of road with a mitsubishi galant and taraus and it was smoother, but that's a different class of car.

for a first car, not bad. we were trying to get one for my GF last year but the dealer wouldn't deal