I was cleaning the inside of my car today when I read that little white sticker on the passenger side door. Under the suspension heading it had sport suspension and somewhere else it had LX2.0 special edition. I wonder if we have got the same suspension as the ES?

 

Yes, it does have the same suspension, and so does the DX, LX 1.6L and Protege5 8-) All U.S.-market Proteges except the MP3 have the same shocks, bushings, spring rates and sway bars.

Some models use different lengths of springs to keep the ride height uniform between cars with different combinations of options, but the spring rate (i.e. stiffness) is always the same; the only difference is the length.

 

Do all Canadian SE's lack swaybars? Do they only have front swaybars, or no bars at all? Is this only for certain model years, or for all of them?

I was told by the folks at Mazda Motorsports that all U.S. Proteges were the same, and the only cars with softer suspension were Asia/Pacific models.

Just curious.

 

I just checked the Canadian Mazda website, and the 2002 SE has front and rear bars.

http://www.mazda.ca/eng/cars/2002_protege/features.html

Dunno about the 99-01 models, I'll try to check this Also, to answer another question, the front sway bar on the BJ-chassis Protege is *not* a load bearing member. The front suspension is significantly different on all 3 generations of Protege.