Comparison Tests
Like so many other vehicle categories in this incomprehensible age of the sport-utility vehicle (strange as it may seem, many benighted souls think those things are fun to drive), compact sports sedans have been languishing. Particularly those relatively inexpensive haulers that are simultaneously capable of meeting the transportation needs of a young family and the need for speed of the solo driver. That means four doors, reasonable all-around comfort, and room in back for a niño or two, plus an appetite for attacking switchbacks, straightening out winding country roads, and terrorizing freeway on-ramps.
As you may have noticed, there haven't been too many cars answering this description in the past few years. Why? Because compared with the profit ratio of SUVs, small hot-rod sedans post small sales volumes and even smaller profit margins. And with mainstream America still in the thrall of its mystifying infatuation with trucks, and still spectacularly indifferent to fuel efficiency, it's not at all surprising that econohunks have been scarce. In fact, what is surprising is that there are enough sedans meeting the general budget-bandito parameters-affordable, lively, agile, and possessing four entry ports-to make an interesting comparison test.
The results were pretty surprising, too.
The inspiration for this showdown isn't hard to figure out. Ever since we previewed Nissan's resurrection of its Sentra SE-R cult classic (C/D, September 2001), we've been waking up at odd hours of the night, hoping that maybe this would be the day we'd finally get this latter-day SE-R onto a test track. Hey, is it time? Are we almost there yet? Huh? Huh?
A search for other compact commandos yielded a richer harvest than expected. The most formidable of the SE-R's challengers, on paper at least, seemed to be the Jetta GLS with VW's new-for-2002 version of the corporate 1.8-liter turbo four, boosted from an adequate 150 horsepower to a gratifying 180. Our 20-grand scalpel eliminated the Subaru WRX (base price: $24,520; and yes, we know the Jetta came in well over 20 large, but we can 'splain that later), whereupon we fell back to the less potent Impreza 2.5RS. The Dodge Neon R/T, on the other hand, was so affordable (base price $17,045) it almost fell off the other end of the price chart, and it took a special trim package to get it within range of the others.
The Mazda Protegé MP3, for its part, had a different kind of deficit. Its as-tested price ($18,785) was right on the, ahem, money, but at 140 horsepower, its engine output was the weakest of the field, and we were skeptical about its ability to stimulate the ol' adrenal glands. Could the Mazda keep pace? The short answer is no and yes. The long answer comes later.
As is so often the case in summer comparisons, our test route took us from Ann Arbor into the wilds of southeast Ohio's Hocking Hills region, with its rich variety of ups, downs, blind corners, and decreasing-radius turns-just the right place to sort the quick from the reluctant.
From southeast Ohio we meandered to the northeast corner of the state to spend a day at the Nelson Ledges Road Course, a lumpy but challenging 2.1-mile road circuit whose array of fast and medium-fast curves is still an excellent test venue for cars with street stock suspensions.
By the time we'd motored back to Michigan, we'd put some 750 miles on the various odometers, and our opinions on the various banditos in our test had hardened to certainty. Not a unanimous certainty, by the way. When the ballots were tallied and the chads had settled to the floor, four members of the test crew supported one car as best in test, with a strongly dissenting fifth seeing it otherwise. That crew member, by the way, happens to be manning the keyboard as this is written.
