I love mine, I have already commited to keeping it forever, God willing I plan on handing the keys to my matured son so he can have a super rare car that was alot of fun to drive. Will it be worth 1000s of dollars? Probably not, but it is worth so much more to me than money. It is a sexy car, I have fathomed up teh dream lottery version where I put an EVO8 engine and drivetrain in the speed body. Don't take me seriously, everybody has a what if you one the lottery dream, it isn't going to happen, but if it did then I would have what I want in motor and looks. Back to the speed the way it is, two weekends ago we went up to the Ga mountains, 3 speeds, 1 P5, 1 911(non turbo), and a M3. We had a blast and anybody that tried to keep up with us couldn't, we had the best time pulling off at look outs and waiting to see how long it took the groups of cars trying to follow us to catch up. And the M3 and 911 both had work done to them and they were struggling to keep up. Even on a straight line I am not disappointed, I am keeping up with my buddies SRT4 with 16psi, hard pipes, cat eliminated and e-cutout, so I burst the hell outa his bouble twice, once when I ran 15 psi and was pulling him slightly, then again when I ran 9 psi and barely got pulled on, and I had my cutout closed then. Now I have megasquirt, forged rods, forged pistons and a knife edged and balanced crank waiting install I am gonna show him what it means to learn your car and work hard to make it what it is. I spent a lot of time researching what I want to do and my car thanks me when I do it. I wash it and try to keep it clean, I change the oil, brakes and all other maintenence on schedule to keep the car as healthy as possible. If you treat this car right and research what you are doing there is no reason why this isn't a good platform, I never asked for something to be so simple it is practicly handed to me if I have the money like the stage kits form Mopar, where's the sense of admiration in doing your own work up? So simply put, I do love my Mazaspeed Protege and I too don't like seeing alot of the negative attention it gets from unhappy owners and former owners that feel they moved on to something better thank god. It was an experiment by Mazda and it had/ has its share of problems that all experiments have. SRTs got boost gauges installed from the factory, I don't know one yet that hasn't needed to get it replaced, my buddy mentioned earlier had his warranty declined on the gauge because his cutout made the gauge work incorrectly. anyways goo thread, every once in a while when these pop up I like throwing my word into it.