2003 Mazda Protege ES review from North America

Nothing has gone wrong yet, works excellent. Although, we do encounter the "Cold weather rattle" which is caused by the VICS system which keeps the intake valves open longer to help the engine run when cold.

The new tuner's car and a rice killer.

The car may not be extremely fast, but it handles like a dream. A very fun car to drive on no-and-off ramps and around twisty roads.

To this date I have installed a Cold-air intake form AEM - makes a little more HP, and a more aggressive note from under the hood. It also gives you the "sucking" noise as air rushes into the engine. I've added a cat-back exhaust from Racing Beat who designed and tunned the special edition 2001 MP3 Protege. I also installed the MP3 springs which are 27% stiffer than stock, helping in the twists. I've also added a 19mm adjustable rear sway bar from AWR. Soon, I will be installing the JSPEC intake and exhaust cams from the Mazdaspeed version in Japan and a new set of headers from RacingMazda.

Checkout www.clubprotege.com for more information about Proteges, I'm kopp0041 on that forum.