Definitely, I should have clarified. The Protege is a great car. I've had mine for over a year and a half now and love it. But like I said, if your looking for mods, do looks and save the money you would be spending on performance mods for something that already has the performance.
(mswerd)I bought my wife a brand new VeeDub Beetle and it was in the shop FIFTEEN TIMES in three years. I cut my losses and picked up an '01 Pro at auction after doing a bunch of research and found that JD Power listed it as reliable as the civic and hugely undervalued. It was a "fleet" vehicle aka a rental car. It had 17K on the clock, we beat the Hell out of it for three years and had ZERO issues. It's the reason I bought two more Pros ... Unfortunately, the 2.0 is no less expensive to mod (haha) ...