leave the protege alone as a daily commuter. They are relatively comfortable for long trips, fun and sporty handling, insanely reliable, and get great gas mileage. (i'm almost at 250k miles right now, other than replacing the timing belt and a couple motor mounts have only done oil changes, knock on wood lol) and I average 32-35mpg depending on the time of year (worse mileage in the summer when AC is on).
Then buy something else to go fast. My personal opinion, you can't beat a 1st gen or 2nd gen DSM for money to power ratio...
but the protege isn't going to ever be "fast" unless you go all out, swap in something else like a probe/mx6 V6 drivetrain and turbo the new v6 setup.