tboggs

I don't have any problems with my clutch. In fact I find easier than anything I have ever driven. What exactly do you not like about it?

Brubeck

First off... I didn't say I didn't like it

Secondly... I didn't say there was anything chinsey or cheap about it.

It's obviously not the best in the world, or the car would retail for a hell-of-a-lot more, and all the flyers would say "Drive the car with the best clutch in the world!" Of course, I would be instantly wary of any thing that was claimed to be the "best in the world!"

That said, I think the clutch is a little on the lite side... I have a feeling that if I'm stuck in traffic too long, I could simply take off my shoe and rest it on the clutch, and that would be sufficient to disengage the gears. I prefer a little more resistance, as I find that this makes it easier to smoothly let the clutch out when stopped in traffic and I only have to move 20 feet. With a really lite clutch, you have to be extra sensitive with your foot or your car does that bouncy lurching thing.

When no one's in front of me, the clutch is fine

I have also driven things with a clutch on the opposite side of the spectrum... my Pop's truck for instance, had a hydraulic clutch with 2+ feet of throw... you literally had to stand up out of the seat a bit to get it down... slowly disengaging it was a fine art in balancing on yer right butt cheek while you slowly ease the left cheek into the seat.

douggie

Why the hell r we talking about this again?

There's another thread with 6 pages of posts here:
http://www.protegeclub.com/forum/sho...=&threadid=104

(I thought we've gotten it out of our systems)

KrisA

I think the clutch on the new Proteges is just about perfect for a small daily driver kind of car. Not to heavy, not too light easy to opperate and not at very grabby. I can stand driving my MR2 in traffic as the heavy clutch starts to get annoying after a while.

If you want to feel an annoyingly light clutch try a new Nissan Sentra or Honda Civic... yuk!

Maxx Mazda

I agree with Eckton here. In fact, if you're interested in putting your hand on a girl's leg (I pull this with my girlfriend all the time ) the shift into 5th puts your hand about 2 inches from where it needs to be.

Try that with an automatic!

Makaveli

Hey, I gotta pull that off hehe

Okay, first of all, after driving my friend's new civic, my other friend's rx-7 and more then a handful of other standard cars, our Proteges have a very nice, and I mean VERY nice clutch, as well as the little feedback through the shifter.

I just hate pushing the girl away and telling her that I need to shift because she always leans over on my shoulder, but hey, I gotta do what I gotta do. Plus she always tells me that I'm too paranoid about my car cause I always look over if it looks like she dropped a piece of paper or something....

Zerostatic

I'm getting an ES this summer and I wanted a stick but my parents don't want me to get one. Oh, well at least they're paying for most of the car. Well, the point of my post was that I heard (from several car reviews) that the automatic gearbox in the protege is actually quite good and is not as "dumb" or performace robbing as a lot of the other automatics out there.