Gianni's cars part 7: Mazda Protege5

I sold the 164 in the spring of 2002.  At over 10 years old, it got to be a pain to deal with as a daily driver.  The only place that worked on it was Ferrari of Seattle.  The worst part was that it would often take a week to get parts for it, if they were in the Alfa parts warehouse in FLA.  If they had to come from Italy, longer.  It got old trying to figure out who to bum a ride from while the car waited for parts.  Anyway I sold the car to what I thought was a good home, the buyer showed up to see the car in a  Milano.  I carfaxed the VIN later and found 6 months after I sold it, it was totaled.

Anyway, I replaced it with the Anti-Alfa, a Japanese Mazda.  The Protege5 got good reviews in the buff books, but it was hard going from an Alfa to a Mazda.  I thought the car wasn't particularly fast, the engine was pretty gruff when you rev'd it (so you didn't) and the suspension was firm, but had the jouncy feel that "sporty" Asian cars have.  The magazines raved about the "communicative" steering, I thought it was dead and artificially heavy to give it that feel of heft that people these days seem to confuse for good handling.  Here are the only pictures I have of it (I took when I was selling it).