LONG LIVE THE ROADSTER
2016 MAZDA MX-5 MIATA,
For the first five minutes, I drove the new Mazda MX-5 like a Canadian, gently. For the next hour and a half, I drove like a Spaniard — and this little roadster loved it. ¡Madre de Dios! It’s fan-frickin’-tastic!
We begin in the heart of Barcelona behind the wheel of a right-hooker first-generation Miata in British Racing Green. Rather brave of Mazda to let us out in it before showing us their newest car, not so much because we might die in tumultuous Spanish traffic before reaching the presentation, but because this is the original masterwork. It’s like being a Rolling Stones cover band and having the Rolling Stones as your opening act: Yes, age means a few creaks and possibly mild leakage, but the magic is still there.
Mazda’s engineers can talk about weight-savings, but this fourth-generation car arrives wearing a heavy mantle of expectation. Also, the old car had the benefit of being about the size and weight of one of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoes, but the new one faces down the pressures of ever-more-stringent safety regulations. And yet it’s lighter, by as much as 100 kilograms depending on the trim (the JDM spec version hovers around 1,000 kg).
We knew that was coming, but here’s a surprise: the horsepower rating for the MX5’s new 2.0-litre powerplant is 155 horsepower.
Just a reminder — we live in a world with two 700-hp Dodges, and here’s Mazda showing up with even less zip than before. If it were any other sports car, the move would be utter and complete madness.
But the brilliance of a Miata has never been about the power, nor curb-weight, nor stopping distances, nor the ability to whang through a corner like a spiked tetherball. It’s the way driving it makes you feel — everything all at once.
Firstly, the designers have done a great job with the shape.
It has a serpentine face that Harry Potter’s sorting hat would stick in Slytherin, but the car has a heart that’s pure Gryffindor. The nose is set low, the lines swelling up, down, and along the flanks like the stroke of a Japanese callig- raphy brush. It’s taut, compact, smaller than the original but fiercer and more focused.
Then you pop the trunk open to find room for two suitcases. “It is a two-seater car,” program manager Nobuhiro Yamamoto says, “so we had to think about two people.”
Here’s the other good piece of news about the new MX-5. Look past the gorgeous exterior into the cockpit, led in by the way the body colour seems to flow over the tops of the door sills, and you start finding touches that’ll have current Miata owners cheering. You no longer need to operate the power windows with your elbow. The cupholders pop out of their rearward location and can be set down within reach. Headroom’s up by a fraction, as is legroom, and the seat tilts two degrees further.
They’ve done something interesting with the seats too, eliminating springs in favour of steel-mesh netting that’s quite comfortable yet hugs the kidneys. You sit 20 millimetres lower in the car, and 15 mm closer to its centre (thanks to a more compact transmission tunnel), the shifter just where it should be, the tachometer right at your eyeline. The nose drops away sharply for good visibility, yet the twin front wheelarches sit up sharply like the flares of an old Corvette Stingray, showing you the edges of the car.
The MX-5s we drove differed in three distinct ways from Canadian-spec cars: 16-inch alloys with a 195-series tire, a 131hp 1.5L four-cylinder engine, and the steering wheel bolted on the wrong side. We’ll get our version in late summer or early fall equipped with 17-inch tires with 205 mm Bridgestones, a 2.0L four-banger with 155 hp and 148 pound-feet of torque, and in left-hand drive (obviously) with slightly different tuning for the electronic power steering.
It takes a half beat to get used to the electronic steering, which is not quite as feel some as the manual rack in the firstgen. Mazda’s engineers paid a penalty in both weight and cost to keep the steering column straight to put the power assist low on the rack, and it’s mostly worked.
But the chassis and the suspension ... oh joy. What light- ness! What effervescence! There’s far more aluminum in this new MX-5, from fenders to suspension knuckles, and the result is a four-wheeled soufflé fitted with an engine that revs to 7,500 rpm. Let’s go visit the redline.
The MX-5 fizzes and braps, blowing a four-pot raspberry as it pulls right to the limit. The engineers have been hard at work shaving off grams here and there, shortening up the intake and replacing the crankshaft with an all-steel unit with specially balanced counterweights. And check this out — to get the midrange tone right, Mazda’s engineers added a small amount of weight — 20 grams — to the rear differential in order to create a resonance in the midtone of the engine. It’s a true mechanical solution, not faux engine noise piped into the cabin.
Chew on that, BMW. Meanwhile, on the wriggling, lonely roads of the Spanish countryside, one of the other MX-5s has caught up, and is filling the rear-view with its fierce little headlights.
The suspension is doublewishbone up front and multilink out the back, which adds a little extra positive toe-in for the outside rear wheel when cornering. It gives the MX-5 a planted feel, a duellist balanced on the ball of his rear foot, ready to thrust out of the corner with a riposte of sinewy steel.
Don’t call this a duel — it’s a dance. Our two little cars rambunctiously tumble through the turns like a pair of wrestling collie pups, all wriggle, yapping and no malice. It’s fun, not fury; ballet, not battle.
As we approach the end of our short run, I rip back down the hill so I can have one more waltz. In fact, I briefly consider simply fleeing to the Italian Alps.
It’s a brilliant little jewel of a car and you should buy one. Now. Next year. Buy one in a decade’s time, when everyone’s whirring to work in autonomous Audis, tapping away with noses buried in their iPhone 10s, and then carve up traffic with Rush’s
Red Barchetta cranked up to full blast.
In the near future, Mazda will build their millionth MX5, firmly cementing it as the most popular sports car in history. The people who built this one obviously care about driving. If you care about driving too, you will love it.
Driving
It’s a brilliant little jewel of a car and you should buy one. Now