Thoughts on used Protege
 

Hey everyone,

I am in the market for a car and found a used '01 protege that looks like it meets what I am looking for, but the problem is I am new to Protege's and am not exactly sure what to look for or to expect.

Anyway, the information I have is below, and any thoughts that you have would really be appreciated, and who knows, I may be hanging around here alot more in the coming months :rolleyes:

Thanks,
Cam


2001 mazda protege, maual, spoiler, blk, cruise, pw, pl, allow wheels. 137K.
7200 CDN

+ = looks goods, handles well, nice amenities for the $$

- = expensive to mod, relatively speaking

You'll like the car, though. And if the car has been maintained properly and is in good condition that's not a bad asking price.

ES-GT? Which engine?

Hmmmm, sort of what I was thinking too, aren't the Km's a little high though?

It is an LX, 1.8 L Engine I believe

Naw, that's just a little over the average...it's fine as long as the engine has been maintained.
Do you have access to any/all of the records?

Not sure to be honest, I am going to take a look at it later today and was hoping to look at the records then (assuming they exist). If they don't have any I may be a little warry about getting it.

If there are no records available, take it to a mechanic that you trust and have it looked over carefully--unless you are familiar with that kind of thing yourself...

PS--I'm diggin your avatar, lol

Ya, there is still one thing that still isn't sitting well with me. The guy who is selling it is a young mechanic who bought it at an auction a month ago. He says he bought it for his mom, but then she bought a truck instead so that is why he is selling it.

We will have to see tonight, I'll let post here after I've checked it out, and if nothing is jumping out to me, I'll send it over to my mechanic to have a look at ;).

As for the avatar, I found it a few months back and have loved it! So I'm glad others are enjoying it too :)

Thanks for the help so far, it's much appreciated!

Cam

I have a 01 Protege SE with 50k on it. Bought it at 43.5K for 10,500$CDN
Car was off lease, and most parts in the engine looked new, or just very clean. Had rough idle when testing it, had that fixed.
Had it for 5 months and the EGR valve crapped out for 507 CDN$ for reparing it.
Bought it at a used car dealership where they sell mostly off lease vechs.

It seems strange that the guy who is selling the car to you suddenly wanted to get rid of it after his mom bought a truck?? Could be a good deal or he found something wrong with it and wants to dump it.

I took a look at it yesterday and it seemed alright. Needs a new winshield, but besides that it looked good. My mechanic is going to give it the once over, the driver side door was making a metal 'tingy' sounds and was missing the plastic side bumper (the thing about half way up the door on the outside, not sure what it is called) so that was making me think it was in an accident at one point.

The VIN checked out fine though and as I said originally, it felt good, and was exactly what I was looking for actually. So hoping he isn't dumping it because he found something that me and my mechanic miss, it looks like I should be the a new happy owner of a Protege :)

Cam

Hey Shweed, it sounds like a pretty good car to me. The miles are kinda high, but Mazda is known for building quality cars nowadays, and the Protege in particular has a good reliability history. My 2000 Protege has an occasional metallic buzzing in the drivers side door too, it's annoying at times, but it's nothing to worry about (it could possibly be fixed just by tightening some of the screws in the door panel). Are you sure it's an LX model with a 1.8 liter engine? I thought Mazda offered the LX with just the 1.6 liter and, later, the 2.0 liter. The 1.8 liter was just for the earlier ES models. I could be mistaken, but I thought you should check into it, cause I heard the 1.6 liter is gutless. Congrats on finding a good manual equipped car; it has a greater potential of becoming a fast car (with the proper mods) than a comparably equipped Protege with an automatic.