1990 Mazda 323 Protégé Test Drive

The 1990 Mazda 323 Protégé stretched common notions of performance for subcompacts.  Mazda engineers endowed the all-aluminum 1.8-liter twin-cam engine available on the 323 Protégé with many of the technological updates more familiar to sport sedans: four-valve-per-cylinder combustion chambers, a dual-tract tuned intake manifold, and a pair of hollow-cast camshafts.  All this added up to a 125-hp output, which translated to quick acceleration and a top speed in excess of 130 mph for the front-wheel-drive car.  To handle this level of speed and aid in handling, the design of the chassis was accomplished with the help of computer simulation, yielding a substantial increase in the body’s resistance to bending without using more metal.  This gave the Protégé the solid and secure feel of a larger car, but not at the expense of the car’s quick response, light feel, and level of control at the limit of adhesion.  The car’s front suspension was MacPherson strut, and the rear was a refined version of Mazda’s twin trapezoidal link system. The most intriguing aspect of the 323 Protégé was that all of the advanced automotive engineering came inside the smartly styled wrapper of a subcompact car.

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