[THEME MUSIC]
A few years ago, I wrote a blog in which I questioned the
greatness of the Mazda MX-5.
In the eyes of pretty much every car enthusiast, this was
a crime worse than an Alex Roy suit and hat combo.
But I meant it.
I really did.
I just don't quite get what all the fuss is all about.
And this is some of what I wrote.
"It seems I'm alone in being completely ambivalent as to
the existence of the Mazda MX-5.
Apparently, the 900,000th example has just rolled out of
Hiroshima, which means there will be yet more public
outpourings of emotion for a machine which drives with all
the precision of a boneless limb.
This will not endear me to anyone who's ever owned or
loved an MX-5.
I just always judge sports cars on the way they drive,
and I've always found the little Mazda slow, imprecise,
and unsatisfying.
And the MX-5 isn't exciting.
An Elise is exciting, because it's a proper sports car,
whereas the MX-5 is just a way of being a little more exposed
to the elements." And so it went on.
I even ended up calling it, well, shit, and that didn't go
down too well either.
These days, I'm haunted by the bloody things.
Not just because that blog generated considerable hatred
but because Dan Trent, the editor of PistonHeads, where I
do my writing stuff, has one of the bloody things.
And Neil, who stands behind the camera every
week, has one, too.
They both think they're great and talk about them like
they're a cross between Florence
Nightingale and Bambi.
The MX-5 really can [INAUDIBLE]
So today, it's car swap day.
Neil gets the 599, and I get the MX-5.
But this isn't quite the deal of the century for Neil that
you might have expected.
Because even though I'm swapping sharp Italian lines
and 600 horsepower for a tight perm, about 7 horsepower, and
a body shell with the twist resistance of a Haribo
crocodile, Neal still has to stand behind the camera, which
won't give him much time to drive the posh Fiat.
Oh, no.
So from where I'm standing, we're both losers.
Or are we?
Because today, I'm going to work out if I was right or
wrong about the MX-5.
So the case for the prosecution of the MX-5, and
that's my personal prosecution of the MX-5, is that it's
never quite squared with what I wanted from a sports car.
And I suppose, at this point, I'm going to define what I
mean by sports car.
And I think, perhaps, my definition differs
from a lot of people.
Just because a roof comes off a car doesn't
make it a sports car.
That makes it a convertible or a roadster or something like
that, you know.
The evidence is on the seat behind me.
It says Roadster.
The way I define a sports car is the way it behaves, the way
it makes me feel, and the way the controls feel to me, so
the steering, the gear box, the pedal box, where I sit in
the car, and also the way the car responds to my inputs.
So the more I push the car, the more I kind of
want back from it.
So the harder I drive it, the better it gets.
And in several of those categories, the MX-5 has
always been a bit missing to me.
Now, I'd probably like to answer some of the critics at
the time who gave me, yeah, a right old mouthful for being
rude about the MX-5.
Because, of course, you can't be rude about the MX-5.
You can be rude about anything in the
world, but not the MX-5.
I made a couple of mistakes, because I didn't flesh out
that piece too far.
It was only a few hundred words long.
One thing, I do believe that the very first MX-5s, the gen
ones, had something about them.
They definitely were, for me, more exciting cars to drive
than the later cars, especially the latest one,
which I have no interest in whatsoever.
The other thing is the nature of the car itself.
I'm talking about driving standard cars.
And so many of the defenses of the MX-5 that I've read say,
oh, yeah, mine's got the following diff, the following
suspension, the following engine mods, and it's now a
riot to drive.
If it's heavily modified, that's not a stock MX-5.
So I don't think that's a valid defense anyhow.
I'm in Neil's pride and joy, and I'm now going to try and
understand the car and find what there is to enjoy about
this car, and maybe, hopefully, prove myself wrong.
So Neil's pride and joy is a VR-Limited.
That means it's got locking diff.
It's a 1.8 liter car.
It's gone 118,000 kilometers, and it is rather a sweet
little thing.
I mean, obviously, the color's a bit questionable and some
other things, but it's Neil's, so he's not a man of taste in
some respects.
What is right about this car is that it feels the right
size on the road.
It's got a really quite punchy little engine, and it can be
stroked along at reasonable speed.
Break down the components, steering's fine.
I don't think it's brilliant.
It's not sort of chattering away at me.
People lead me to believe that these things are all about
communication, and I'm not feeling that, perhaps partly
because I'm sitting too high, I think, for the type of car
that it is.
Gear box, pretty good.
Lever's quite short throw.
Everything else about it is, it's good, it's fun, but it's
not remarkable.
It's not something that would get me absolutely screaming
from the treetops about how amazing a driving
experience it is.
Ultimately, and I use this phrase a lot, if you push the
car a bit harder, it doesn't seem to reward
you an awful lot.
And it starts to move around a bit.
It's a bit wallowy.
It's got quite a lot of grip.
It's not moving around the whole time.
In the dry, you have to try really hard to
unstick it at all.
In the wet, it'll do this--
well, now, I'll cut you into that, because that's why it's
amazing, but if you try and drive it like that in the wet
the whole time, it can be quite tricky, actually, even
with this locking diff.
Am I surprised at how sweet this car is?
Yes.
Okay, Neil, a little bit.
Was I too harsh overall on the MX-5?
Perhaps, but I'm gonna spend a bit more time in this one to
fall on my sword at all or to retract anything I said.
I think I was wrong to make blanket assumptions about all
MX-5s, because this one, to me, feels a lot more fun than
the Mk2 that I drove and also than the later car, which as I
said, I really don't like that much at all.
So let's move from these more open roads, which really don't
suit the MX-5, because it doesn't feel that powerful
anyway-- and up here, it feels like it's really lacking
power-- and move into some more tight, technical roads,
which I think suit this car far more.
And as if by magic, we're now on a much narrower road.
There are a few more curves [INAUDIBLE] hedge rows.
This is MX-5 country.
To me, it's not a car, still, that I want to grab by the
scruff of the neck, though.
It's not bad, but when it starts to move around a bit,
it all feels a little bit messy.
Suppose some people like that.
I don't, especially.
There are probably two MX-5s.
Now, bear with me.
I'm not going mad.
When you're driving an MX-5 on a day like today, the sun's
out, there's the car that you're sitting in, and even
for me, someone who isn't a fan of this thing, it's a
passable roadster.
It's actually quite nice with the roof down.
I accept that.
But then there's the MX-5 that people see you driving.
Now, I'm someone who is not self-conscious, and I really
don't care about what I look like in my clothes, as you can
probably tell in my videos.
But I just don't like being seen in this thing.
Maybe it's because it's a bit girly and all the usual
hairdresser jokes.
I don't know what it is.
I just--
I feel a bit ashamed in an MX-5.
Now, if I don't especially like the outside of the car,
there's something very appealing about the way this
car's aged inside.
It's very simple design, but the one thing none of us can
argue about the MX-5 is the way this car was
designed and built.
It is a quality, quality product.
I mean, this one, 16 years old, and it feels really,
really solid.
There's a simplicity in here that just wouldn't be matched
if we got into an equivalent, contemporary MGF or something.
That would now feel like a right old man inside.
This doesn't.
And also, because this is an import car, it's got this
incredible hi-fi system with the speakers in the headrests.
That works absolutely brilliantly.
And the heater-- the heater can melt your shoes.
The motor's a good sport, though.
It's willing.
It revs up to about six and a half, doesn't really want to
go much further than that.
Gear ratios are a bit too long.
Look, I can objectively pull holes in this car for
quite a long time.
Where I need to apologize to the MX-5 community
unreservedly is that this car is worth 2000 pounds, and for
the experience I'm having today, genuinely, with the
roof down and what I'm doing, I don't think you could match
it for 2000 pounds.
In my defense, at the time, I wasn't talking about all 2000
pound Mk1 MX-5s.
I was talking more about the more expensive cars that are
getting into kind of used S1 Elise territory, because I
think it doesn't stack up to an Elise at all.
But for doing this, for the money, OK, it's
a nice little thing.
It is a nice little thing.
But--
and there has to be a "but," doesn't there--
I still don't think it deserves this amazing status
as a driver's car.
I just don't.
I think it's fine.
I don't think it's bad.
But for the money, give me a 205 GTI any day of the week,
161, I don't mind.
I just have a lot more fun driving that car
than I would this.
But some people just love having the roof off.
So maybe this is a great roadster and not a great
sports car.
Is that a fair definition?
It can't be that bad, can it?