ggrab
09-03-2008, 11:53 PM
We recently decided to park the Expedition (only used for pulling the trailer when necessary now) and get my wife a small car. She insisted on something sporty since she likes to drive my Cobra so much. I had heard many good things about Mazda's so we started looking at 3's and Protege's when we came across a 2001 Protege MP3. I had never heard of the MP3 model (they only made 2000 of them), so I looked up some info on it and was impressed with what I read. I was even more impressed when we drove the car. It does not have a lot of power (2.0 liter, 150 HP) but it has absolutely incredible handling, a great stereo, and great gas mileage. I really could not be more impressed with the handling and overall build quality of this car. I've been driving it mysellf quite a bit because it is almost as fun as the Cobra, but gets way better gas mileage. Of course, there is no replacement for the sound of the 5.0 and the low end torque, but if anyone else is thinking about getting a small, reasonably priced, yet fun to drive car, the Mazda's are hard to beat. We've had the car about 3 months now without one complaint. In fact I like the thing more every time I drive it. If it had a little more power it would run circles around my Cobra in the twisties. We could have looked into the MazdaSpeed Protege's for more power, but they require premium fuel (turbo), get a little lower gas mileage, sell for a good bit more, and have higher insurance rates. This car really is the most fun thing I have seen in an reasonably priced economical car.