Mazda 323 Protege

The Mazda 323 Protege is a lovely car, great fun to drive.

Fast car, drives well, no oil consumption at all.

Everything is computerised, you can't do your adjusments.

The Mazda 323 Protege comes in with plenty of equipment and has a nice interior trim. The ride is comfortable enough for four adults inside, and the driving position is both adaptable and good. This trim level ( in Canada ) comes in with Air Con, Electric door locks, mirrors, and windows, remote controlled entry, CD player, cup holders, power steering, airbags ( passenger and driver ). Alloys are an optional extra. Available in either 5 speed manual or 4 speed automatic gearbox.

In general, this is a nice city car to move about all day, in essence. But then again, in essence, it can occasionally tackle the highway every once in a while with the occasional flooring it to get some sort of extremely childish adrenaline rush, if you must. And if you absolutely must, then opt for the five speed manual gearbox because it will save valuable fuel money, handle better, drive better, and go faster too. All in all, this Mazda is all zoom zoom unless you zoom too much then I'm afraid you won't like what you see. The finish details are fine up to a certain zoom level beyond which you get the feeling it's a LEGO car. The steering seems to be the only thing likeable about this car, everything else being simply 'there' and 'present'. But then again this doesn't cost as much as a C Class Benz and if it did, no one would buy it.

Want to buy a Japanese car? In my "opinion" don't buy a Mazda, my Nissan Primera & Mitsubishi Carisma proved to be far better, in ALL aspects.

If you check the forums you'll also see it's not just the older (if you can call 5 years old), from Mazda with CEL problems, oh yes pitting brakes are also a problem; I was told by a Mazda dealer that pitting brakes on a car with less than 10k wasn't uncommon. AVOID!

Purchased new in late November 2000, got this car instead of larger family style but turns out this was probably a mistake. A supposed high quality vehicle turned out to have numerous small faults from day one such as scratches on dashboard, creaking front door trims, white cutting compound all over the left side of the car which has affected the door handle trims permanently and so on, but the worst thing is a directional instability which becomes white knuckle stuff at higher speed. The selling dealer was totally useless and looked at me as if I had been smoking some illegal substances when I complained about the handling/stability issue. It took 6 months for Mazda Australia engineers to diagnose a failed power steering rack, then nearly another two months to get one from Japan as there was no stock anywhere in the country. After this the car felt teriffic for about 6 weeks, then went back to its old habits. This is still continuing, 11 months later and Mazda say there is nothing wrong with the car despite it being blown around alarmingly at almost any speed. This problem is so bad I refuse to take it on any country trips which involve prolonged driving at high speeds. The vehicle has had five wheel alignments in 20000kms, yet Mazda say this is normal wear and tear! They also say that a "light" car like this is expected to move around in the manner I have been experiencing but I say this is just nonsense and we have never had this sort of trouble with any previous "light" front wheel drive cars. With a kerb weight of over 1100kgs I wouldn't describe it as "light". I will never buy another one from this manufacturer ever again.