2002 Mazda Proteg5- A Unique Sized Compact

Can you have fun in a cheap car? Mazda thinks so, and to prove it, launched the five-door Proteg5 sports wagon, a car loaded with lots of possibility. In a market exploding with wanna-be enthusiast rides, Mazda barreled in with a unique compact-sized wagon-betting that today's youth would develop an immediate affinity for its $16,815 window sticker and its sporty image.

Sport Compact Car's first drive in a five-speed Proteg5 was met with as many frustrations as surprises, but in the end, we anticipate big things ahead for this all-new platform. The body styling is cutting-edge and very European looking, ripe for customization if you will. The not-so-good news is the sheer lack of power throughout the 6500 rpm band.

Getting to the heart of the matter; while the performance from its 130-hp, 2.0-liter engine is sufficient to satisfy two thirds of the population, the Proteg5 isn't ready for hot-rod status just yet. Certainly, Mazda must be hoping that the performance aftermarket takes a liking to the newest member of the family, like it did with the 130-hp Ford Focus line. There's no doubt that the Proteg5 is in need of a turbo and intercooler, if one can find room inside the engine bay. An aftermarket intake, header and suspension system are a given; the question is, how long will it take the tuners to produce them? Or, will Mazda surprise us next year?

On the other hand, because the new Proteg5 shares its engineering with the suspension-tuned MP3, enthusiasts that are considering a Proteg5, can immediately bolt-on the firmer Racing Beat MP3 components if they choose to (available at Mazda dealerships). Currently, aftermarket engine performance bolt-ons are another story that we don't have many answers for, as of press time; however, intake cams from the Japanese-only Sport 20 do interchange, according to SCC engineering ace Dave Coleman.

Built in Hofu, Japan, the new Proteg5 sports independent MacPherson struts with coil springs up front and independent struts with coil springs located by Mazda's Twin-Trapezoidal Link (TTL) design for the rear.

Enhanced by a front strut tower bar and front and rear stabilizers, the stock suspension is confident on wet and dry road surfaces. Cornering is flat and well-balanced for a wagon with 60/40 weight distribution. Though you'd expect the Proteg5 sports wagon to weigh lots more than the Proteg sedan, the new sports wagon is only 100 lbs. heavier. And, that isn't much to worry about. Especially, when you factor in 19.8 cubic feet of added cargo volume in the sports wagon-compared with 12.9 cubic feet for the Proteg sedan (in the Proteg's trunk) line-up. Fold the Proteg5's 60/40 split rear seating and the interior cargo area expands to 24.4 cubic feet, just shy of the Ford Focus SE wagon. Other standard features include cargo hooks and a roof rack-items that are especially inviting to mountain bikers, skiers and all-around sports nuts. In the end, the benefits of owning a Proteg5 quickly add up.

Indeed, side-by-side against Ford's new Focus SE wagon, the new Proteg5 is slightly smaller and offers a little less cargo space, but those shortcomings are livable...and nothing a long test drive in won't cure. I found the Proteg5 nimble and remarkably comfortable on extended drives.

Thanks to its variable assist rack and pinion, the steering was quick and responsive in tight turns, especially when pushed hard. Understeer is minimal, and braking is immediate, though toe-and-heel driving isn't as rewarding.

From the driver's perspective, the dash is ideal with bright, easy-to-read instrumentation and easy-to-reach HVAC. The seating is supportive, not great, but functional. The dash fit and finish is a nice surprise in a segment that typically spends more money on flash than substance. Like the new MP3, the interior of the sports wagon is trendy without looking cheap. In fact, the white face gauges and trim accents are a rich treat to the entry-level weary buyer. There's a long, long list of standard features, like four-wheel disc brakes and tilt steering that you really don't expect from a car priced so affordably. And, to many buyers, that's probably a good starting point for making that big decision.

Would I buy one? Look around and see what you can get for this little money-I think most of the offerings speak for themselves. If the aftermarket jumps aboard, I might be first in line.

Audio Review Mazda MP3The Proteg MP3, specifically, the audio performance, is an example of yet another way that Mazda is reaching out to the youth market.

Mazda is following in the footsteps of last year's similar OEM/aftermarket collaboration, the Sony Ford Focus, an extensively modified, limited-edition Focus.

This level of marketing apparently was not lost on Mazda's Proteg product planners here in North America-Irvine, Calif. to be more specific. Mazda, seeking to broaden the appeal of its Proteg subcompact to first-time buyers, sought out the help of several major mobile electronics manufacturers before finally partnering with mobile electronics leader Kenwood. The result is a factory-installed system comprised of the same components that are available at your local mobile electronics specialist or superstore. The advantage of the Kenwood MP3 system is that it is part of the car and as a result, can be folded into the monthly finance or lease payment, typically for about $20 extra per month.

MP3 - What Is It?If you consider yourself a computer geek, you already know all about MP3, a file format that compresses the digital audio tracks from compact discs into a smaller size without audible deterioration in sonic quality. Think of it as less bytes, just as much music. A typical commercial compact disc has a capacity of 74 minutes spread over 640 megabytes capacity, which means that a typical minute of conventional digital audio takes about 9 megabytes of the compact disc. With MP3, data not essential (outside of the range of human hearing), is tossed aside, thus compressing the resulting output. With a sampling rate of 128 kilobytes per second, this results in a reduction of the same minute of digital audio down to less than a single megabyte at the highest quality output settings. What this means is that the CD storage medium now has the capacity to store more than 700 minutes of compressed digital audio or the equivalent of 10 CDs, more if lower sampling rates are employed when converting files.

You might say that if you throw out data, doesn't the integrity of the original suffer? The answer is a qualified yes, but here's why it really isn't important in a vehicle. Once your car is rolling, all the surrounding noise effectively masks any audible difference. If you were listening to an original CD with its MP3 cousin on a set of high-quality headphones, you might hear a difference if you had a really well-trained set of ears; otherwise it's a non-issue. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell the difference between a stock and aftermarket exhaust.

What makes MP3 so interesting is that this technology, when combined with Internet access, allows music fans everywhere to swap song files, since it now takes a fraction of the time to transfer a file, still important if you are using a conventional modem with a dial-up connection rather than a high-speed broadband connection. Originally, this song swapping subculture was a disorganized affair, but when the Napster service was launched, the process simplified. When you logon to Napster, you become part of a worldwide network where you could look at the hard drives of other users and they could look at yours, then download song files that they were looking for while you could do the same thing.

Naturally, the recording industry took a dim view of this free exchange of copyrighted intellectual property and went to court to shut down Napster, and succeeded in castrating it. While other file swapping interfaces have developed, none have reached the wildly successful levels of Napster, especially in the weeks and days before the Napster's activities were severely restricted by court order.

What Does MP3 Mean To You?Napster not withstanding, if you own a collection of compact discs and a computer, you're in the MP3 business. You'll need some MP3 software of course, but chances are good if you've bought a computer in the last 24 months, you already have something suitable. If not, shareware is available on the Internet and inexpensive "ripping" software is available at your local computer software outlet. We used the MusicMatch software that was included as part of the software bundle of our 700 MHz HP Pavilion laptop running crash-prone Windows ME. (When you burn your MP3 files, close all other programs and take a break). We organized all our tracks on to the laptop's hard drive, staying within a 600 MB limit and then burned an MP3 CD-R from the laptop onto an external CD burner with USB interface (disconnect all other USB devices when burning a CD to avoid dreaded buffer underrun problems), which we also use to back-up and archive the laptop's hard drive on a regular basis. The burn process occurs at about 8x speed, so copying a pre-recorded music CD to your hard drive in MP3 format takes about six minutes. Once on your hard drive, individual songs can be edited or deleted just like you would any other computer file.

Is it legal to "rip" CDs you own? Of course it is, as long as it's for private use. This goes back to the '70s, when the right to use a home videotape recorder to "time shift" programming was established in the famous "Betamax" court case. This doctrine is followed in the computer industry, since you are allowed to make an archive copy of commercial software as a back-up, should your original become corrupted. (This was more important when most software was distributed on floppy disks rather than the CD-ROMs that are common now).

Now we get to the good part. If you have an MP3 program on your computer, you can rip tunes directly to your hard drive, but that does little good when it comes to playing your MP3 collection in your car. If you have a CD burner (a device that lets you make data and audio CD-ROMs on your computer), you have the first part of the solution. Using inexpensive blank CD-Rs (one-time write discs, like a conventional prerecorded compact disc) or CD-RWs (re-writeable discs, like a cassette or MiniDisc), you can take your MP3 files and burn them to a CD-ROM. There is now just one problem: Most current in-dash mobile audio head units are not equipped to play MP3-encoded CDs. (Some recent head units will play conventionally encoded CD-Rs and CD-RWs, when you simply copy the existing audio tracks to a new disc via your CD burner, but most older head units are not compatible).

That brings us to the Mazda MP3 Proteg, a car equipped from the factory with an MP3-compatible, four-channel 200-watt Kenwood Z919 AM/FM/CD/CD-ROM head unit, the same unit that will set you back about $400 at your local mobile electronics specialist or chain super store. It is teamed with upgraded front and rear two-way speakers in the factory locations and a 150-watt amplified 8-inch enclosed subwoofer tube mounted in the trunk under the parcel shelf.

If you're used to the large buttons, knobs and relative simplicity of a double-DIN factory head unit, the single-DIN front panel of the Z919 is likely to leave you scratching your head. The CD drawer is concealed behind a flip-down front panel with a multi-color display. A small multi-function button on the right-hand side of the display accesses most functions. For its intended audience of aftermarket buyers, it is fairly typical, but for the rest of us, it will take some getting used to. Thoughtfully, Mazda and Kenwood supply a laminated "Quick-Start" guide to familiarize new users with its multitude of features. One side is for typical tuner and CD functions, while the reverse side is just for MP3 access.

If you've burned your own MP3 CD-ROM, you're now ready to rock and roll. For this test, we were able to burn an MP3 CD-ROM with all the selections from all the Beatles double-CD compilation albums (The red 1962-'66, the blue 1967-'70, "Live at the BBC" and all three "Anthology" CDs packed with previously unreleased material). With this MP3 disc, it is possible to drive from Los Angeles to Albuquerque and not listen to the same song twice. It's like having all the music of a 10-disc CD changer at your finger tips in your dash.

How Does It Work, How Does It Sound?After mastering the file hierarchy of our self-produced disc, we accessed the tracks with each individual original disc now residing in its own folder, just like it was on a computer hard drive. We noticed two things right away. First, the Kenwood's display would only display eight characters so our long folder names were reduced to something like "Beatle~1" making it a bit difficult to access the desired folder. The second issue was that when we burned our MP3 disc, we were able to use an online database to label each track, but when the individual tracks were accessed, they played back in alphabetical order, not the order on the original CD. This is only a problem if you are anal retentive about these kinds of things and want to play the tracks in chronological order. (We went back and burned a second MP3 CD-ROM without the track titles and the disc played back in the original order. Obviously, we lost the ability to display the song titles on the Z919's display while playing the second disc).

Once we were in the desired folder, accessing individual tracks was made considerably easier using the supplied remote control, larger than the typical credit card-supplied remotes, but not as large or user-friendly as a TV remote. The main access buttons are located in a circle at the top of the remote but the track back and folder access buttons were reversed in locations that were not logical, from a personal standpoint.

With extensive sound-quality control capabilities, it took some time to get the system sounding like we wanted to, again a matter of personal "preference. Starting with the bass, it is powerful, loud and when tempered by judicious use of the bass and subwoofer control capability built into the Z919, it is well-defined for a factory-installed system. It does tend to overpower the four main speakers, more a byproduct of the system's use of the internal power of the Z919. If we were going to drive a Z919 long-term, we'd opt for the installation of one of Kenwood's powerful four-channel external amplifiers to better balance the system and provide additional head room, something that any aftermarket Kenwood dealer can easily provide. (It should be noted that internal amplifier power is rated under less demanding criteria than a external amplifier. That is why investing in a 200-watt, four-channel amplifier will provide a marked improvement over the 200-watts of the Z919).

Since Kenwood had to rely on the stock speaker placements, when the front-to-rear fader was placed in the center position, the bias was to the rear, a somewhat undesirable trait-certainly if the car was entered as-is in a USAC or IASCA sound-off. It would receive poor marks, but by simply moving the fader control forward solves the problem by reducing power to the rear speakers.

Overall, this is a strong first OEM/aftermarket collaboration between Mazda and Kenwood, but there is room for improvement as it shares many of the same shortcomings of the Ford/Sony "Tooner" Focus. It is obvious that Kenwood entered the game in the late innings, especially with regard to speaker placement. In any audio system design, the best results come from having the sound system engineers working at placing the speakers at the earliest conception of the interior package.

The balance between the internal power of the Z919 and the externally powered subwoofer can also use some work from the standpoint of an audiophile, but in reality, since the MP3 is clearly targeting a youthful audience, overpowering bass may not be such a bad thing. For those more than 30 years in age, it is more boom than true bass, an opinion that seemed to be shared by a number of journalists at the press launch of the MP3 Proteg, all of whom were more than 30 (most were more than 40) years old.

The Kenwood audio package, when wrapped by the well-executed MP3 modifications offers sport compact enthusiasts a viable alternative to buying a stripper and heading to the automotive and mobile electronics aftermarket to personalize your vehicle. Expect to see similar packages from other car manufacturers and audio companies in the months to come. The ability to custom-burn MP3 CD-ROMs, which reminded us of the chore of making custom cassettes in years past, was easier than expected, once we mastered the MusicMatch software.