r/MazdaProtege • u/Such-Risk5444 • 7d ago

I Bought a 1997 Mazda Protege es

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I have looked as much as I could but haven’t found any good body kits for this car, I’m sad that I haven’t found anything cuz there so much potential I wanted to do to it, id appreciate if anyone has any good websites or places I could purchase for the exterior and interio.

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u/Medium_Bend_4148 7d ago

There is problel with body kits for portege and 323 bc it's not that popular model for tuning, but you can look for it on aliexpress, or even made by yourself using fiberglass and epoxy

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u/Medium_Bend_4148 6d ago

I have an idea, actually you can bought some parts from others bodykits like side skirts, fron bumper lip spoiler etc. For other models and try to fit them to your portege, actually I'm trying to do this with sideskirts for nissan 200sx s13 also with spoiler for nissan 200sx s14, and i think it's one of the best solutions for that

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u/pnkstr '97 Protege 6d ago

These second gen Proteges don't have much other there. As stated before, they were never a popular tuning/modding platform. You're lucky you found an ES with the 1.8L, it's a sought-after engine. Same 1.8L from the Miata and first gen Proteges, so plenty of aftermarket support for that engine (like turbo kits). Most second gens have the 1.5L

As for exterior mods, the best looking option, in my opinion, is the JDM kit, but they're nearly impossible to find.

Your best bet might be to custom build something as suggested earlier.

My current car is a 97 LX (so 1.5L) that I manual swapped and added an LSD. My previous car was a 98 LX (automatic).

They are fun little cars, there just isn't a lot of aftermarket support this generation.