I'll miss that car a lot. Even though my wife drives it for the most part I still get lots of seat time and I love that car. I'll miss having such an exclusive car too since it's the spicy orange color and they only made 600 of those total and only half of those came to the USA and the rest to Canada. If anyone is interested I've got an ad over in the forsale section of the forum.

 

i can't say i miss my clunking, squeaking, rattling, hesitating gobbler very much. it did feel nice to drive and handled well, it's just too bad they put such a crappy engine and ecu in it that gets relatively no aftermarket support

 

Yeah, we had the clunk and the ECU flash right after we bought it.....since then not a single problem.......solid as a rock and not so much as a squeak or rattle. As far as aftermarket support, theres still some out there but you've got to remember only like 1700 of these cars came to U.S. shores and are very limited so not much incentive for anyone to mass produce aftermarket parts for them. If you keep the car stock and buy it for what it is......it's fantastic.

 

Im actually considering buying one. The engine is crap but the aftermarket is there to make 250-300 reliable hp. To me thats all the car needs to be a track demon.

 

mine had the flash done right after it came out, didn't help. my front suspension sounded like it was a buggy from 1912 when it was below freezing. my rear suspension went through i think 4 sets of bushings because of the clunk. plus i had some interior rattles from god knows where. oh yea, i was bone stock too except for the rotors and pads i had to replace because the stock rotors had some nasty deposits on them which i only noticed after the car had been all but sitting for 2 months solid while i was out of the country. I also had the windshield decide to crack on 2 separate occassions for no reason, and the first of those the replacement wasn't installed correctly and eventually i could move the windshield with my hand by pressing from the inside. i was lucky though that i was still on my original headunit (even though every once in a while it would do weird things) and my original alarm unit, and i didn't have any cracks in my exhaust at all. from reading on the forum i considered mine to be one of the better MSPs with respect to problems covered under warranty. the only "unique" warranty problem I had was my IAC died randomly.

despite this, the car was still fun to drive and for what it was it was pretty good.

the engine has been out for what, 12 years? it'll keep having the limited aftermarket support it currently does because there are not enough "tuner" cars out that use it, and now that no new cars use it it'll fall off slowly but surely as there is less market for companies to make money by selling products for it. sure you can get aftermarket stuff for it, but it's gonna cost you more because they don't sell much of it, and i guess it depends on what you consider "reliable" at 250-300hp, i know i wouldn't trust for more than 220whp and still consider it reliable, which is one of the reasons i got rid of it.

oldschoolevo, how are you going to get one in belgium?

 

Well Mental Addiction Motorsports makes really good products for the MSP. All your basic mods IE, rods, pistons, fmic ect and she is more than capable of putting down good everyday numbers. The problem is do you want to spend the money?

As far as me getting one I can have one shipped overhere for bout 900usd.

 

i know about MAM, a guy i know from boston just put one of their turbo kits on his p5 and another person I know from western mass has some of their stuff, i think they're the ones that built his engine actually, not positive though. When you start modifying stuff like rods, pistons, etc. your reliability becomes less and less. ask any of the guys with highly modified cars and you'll see that they have to take a lot more care of their cars just to make them run correctly. just not worth it to get 250whp in a fwd car imo.

you could import one and register it? belgium is crazy i wish we could import one of your cars here and register it

 

You are right bout the hp, but it can be done. If I could find a reliable tuner around here I would be good go.

I can import it cause I got Uncle Sam on my side.

 

that's funny, uncle sam is fighting against me bringing a car in

 

I think those cars are sweet i wouldnt sell it

 

Yeah that guy wont let me bring my VI back

 

yeah, I hate to get rid of it......my wife refused to get rid of it.....I tempted her with EVO's, SRT-4's, G35 Coupes......nothing......she loved that Mazdaspeed. It finally took a decked out Audi to win her over. Here's a pic. It still shines like that too.

 

all along i thought you were talking about the mazdaspeed miata... yeah the protege was a nice package, but not too much in the way of an aftermarket. they kept the power low to save the tranny i think...

 

Thats beautiful if i had the extra money id take it off your hands........ Bump

 

bump