Howdy, Stranger!   Does the Protege compare in reliability to
Civic or Corolla?      • I recently bought a 2003 ES as a
replacement for my '90 SE. Now, that car was a beast! 250,000
miles on it! Given, virtually everything quit working...AC,
heat, auto seat belts. But the engine was created to last. Now,
this new car, I'm having trouble already at 1300 miles! There is
a rattling in the engine under cold acceleration. Mazda has told
me that it is an engineering problem, and they hope to have a
fix for it eventually. So, even though I checked for problems
prior to buying, no one mentioned this. So just know that Mazda
has not posted this problem yet, but it exists. I'm currently
looking for anyone with the same complaint. Anyway, they told me
just to ignore it. One bit of advice: don't wait until 1000
miles to rev the engine. Do it before you buy it. I made the
mistake of babying it, and didn't know about the problem until
it was too late. Now I'm stuck.   • boggseboggse Posts: 1,048
The death rattle has be