FREED AT LAST!
The Mazda’s back on the road – a lot later than planned
Overall, with the exception of a dent on the front panel, it didn’t look too bad at all.
The photographs also showed the chassis plate, so I could do some research into the car and was amazed to discover, via the very helpful Aston Martin Heritage Trust, that it had been used by Aston Martin itself to evaluate more powerful engine options in 1975, the prototype for the engine that would eventually become the Vantage!
I had to go to Geneva to at least look at it and it was mine within a year. It still seems like a dream, even though it’s now reality.
1990 MAZDA EUNOS ROADSTER
I think I’ve had it easy having to stay at home, compared to my longsuffering Mazda, at least – which has just emerged from 203 days of its own enforced lockdown.
It feels a very long time ago that I parked NRX up at its ‘temporary’ winter digs – a secure workshop where news ed, Jon Burgess, and Modern Classics editor, John-Joe Vollans, stash their various projects. That was last November, and it’s only had Jon’s Peugeot 305 estate, a partially dismantled Mercedes-Benz 190E and a disused Range Rover to look at since. All of which makes the 108 days that I’ve spent binge-watching box sets, queuing at supermarkets and cutting my own hair – badly – look a bit lightweight.
I’d originally planned on fishing it out just in time for the Practical Classics Classic Car & Restoration Show midway through March, where it was due to appear on the MX-5 Owners’ Club stand – but the event was called off just before Boris Johnson ordered us all to stay put. Things were changing at home, too; my wife Natalie’s expecting our first child, and a two-seater sports car wasn’t exactly ideal for all the outings to pick up antenatal paraphernalia. So the Mazda, now stuck firmly on SORN and with an MoT that expired in January, ended up sitting spring out, too.
But I had plans to get it back on the road once the lockdown rules were eased back just enough to allow meeting up with others from outside the Simister household.
OWNED SINCE
January 2014 //
NRX’s paintwork was caked in a thin layer of dust – and evidence of where my colleagues had been playing noughts and crosses on it – but otherwise in remarkably good condition, rolling freely on unseized wheels. The battery, which I hadn’t disconnected – prelockdown me had naively assumed that its lay-up wouldn’t be that long – had long since given up the ghost, but after fiddling with loose terminals a sociallydistanced John-Joe and I managed to revive its electrics. I flicked the ignition key and it started first time – result!
A week and a freshly sourced replacement battery later and NRX was finally free – and on its way to a pre-booked MoT test. It might have
MILEAGE SINCE LAST REPORT
41 //
TOTAL MILEAGE had noughts and crosses still scrawled across the bonnet but with the vital fluids checked and the tyres inflated, it drove as though it had been parked up yesterday, and made it to J & M Auto Services (01775 769154) without a whimper of complaint.
It earned its latest year’s ticket with a single advisory – specialist Jason Martin correctly sussed that it had been off the road for a long time, and reckoned that some attention to its front brake discs wouldn’t go amiss. That’s on the to-do list, but I had an even more pressing priority for it the minute it finally rejoined my Scimitar. After eight long months of being locked away, it was time to give it a damned good clean!
81,318 //
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