Well, here's the story. My mom has a 1993 Mazda Protege with 197,000 miles on it. She's thinking about buying a new car, which means I get the Mazda. I want to turn it into a front wheel drive sleeper, which means a motor swap. The only badass front wheel drive motor I know of is the Cadillac STS, but are there any Japenese motors (not Honda or Acura) that would be a good powerplant for a little project?

- Ian.

The Yamaha motors out of a Taurus SHO are common swaps. Early ones are V6s, the later ones are V8s. Mazda and Ford have close ties as well. Should be cheap in wrecking yards these days, too. Good luck!

The only other enigne I can think of that would be a good one to use here (although I also think an SHO engine would be the best) is the 2.2L turbo engine out of a late eighties Shelby Daytona/Charger. I think the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Sundance also had this engine, not sure though.... These suprisingly are not as expensive as you'd think and you can find them. I know because I strongly considered putting one in a Plymouth Reliant (also known as a K-car, ) I used to have. Supposedly these motors car be souped up pretty good.

Do you guys in the US get the Mazda SP23? Keeps it in the family, and quite a good powerplant to start with from what I hear. May be a bit expensive though being reasonably new.

Or an SR20 from a Pulsar GTi-R. being 4WD not sure how easy a swap it would be though.

Sorry Alfadog, I don't think we have any of those. I'll look into those Shelby motors though.

You can get the Mazda KL(ZE) performance engine. How similar is a Protege to an MX6 or 626? The engine is a V6. (zoom, zoom, zoom!)

Ian - Turbocharge it a la Protege MazdaSpeed... The Protege engine is the same as in the Miata, so performance parts are available...or bolt on a supercharger...

GWGarrard

Ian - Turbocharge it a la Protege MazdaSpeed... The Protege engine is the same as in the Miata, so performance parts are available...or bolt on a supercharger...

GWGarrard

Even for the 1993 Protege?