2000 Mazda Protege es review from North America

O2 sensor

Throttle position switch

transmission

brakes

exhaust

front sway bar.

This car has switched to the dark side. We got the car with 6 miles on the clock. It now has 125K on it. The problems all started around 50-55K miles. (3year/ 30K warranty. Mazda did have some forethought when they came up with this guarantee) First it was the brakes. I guess not too bad, but rotors too. The front pieces connecting the front sway bar went bad around 80K. A $375 repair. Next the clutch wore thin and needed replaced. A $500+ repair. This is something that is common yes, but a little over a year later it needed replaced again. Maybe my driving habits. But a year later the tranny place found a leaking seal, that was destroying clutches. I had the tranny resealed for another $500. Now a month after the warranty expired for the tranny work. One of the axles popped out of the car for $1500 repair. The next thing was a $400 throttle position switch. The thing still didn’t run right. O2 sensor. Right now the car has a broken exhaust pipe. You see the geniuses at Mazda made a cast iron pipe coming off of the exhaust manifold to connect to the exhaust pipe. On the end of this cast piece is two wafer thin tabs that have a lot of pressure on them. They break off because they get rusted and then you have an exhaust leak right in front of the cabin of the car. Maybe there will be a law suit and we can have a recall on this dangerous problem, because the piece is a dealer item that cost too much to fix for a car that has depreciated like a bowling ball thrown from a plane. I’m looking threw junk yards often for the piece. And my dash light is flashing again. Wonder how much this will cost me. It is probably related to the broken exhaust. I put spark plugs into this thing every 6 months. I had a old Mazda in the early ‘90s. It was a great car what happened to this company over the years? I think I’ll stay away from this marquee from now on. I’ve never had so many problems with a car with more miles and older as I’ve had with this car.