Mazda sticks with winning formula
MAZDA RESISTS MESSING WITH A GREAT FORMULA
Mazda MX-5 Around €30,000
THREE decades on, the fourth generation of Mazda’s MX-5 twoseater drop-top convertible is out, barely in time to catch the last rays of our extended summer.
And it comes complete with a meatier new 184hp 2-litre engine that answers critics who said the 160hp version lacked sufficient oomph.
The previous MX-5 range is priced from just over €28,000 and prices for the new model are to be confirmed, as it is not on sale in Ireland until April of next year.
The original MX-5 was Japan’s genius move to reinvent the classic British two-seater roadster for the modern era. It caused a storm when launched at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the Lotus Elan built in Norfolk during the Sixties and Seventies, and came nearly a decade after MG at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, closed in 1980, marking the end of the Midget and MGB.
I owned a Midget in the Nineties and I remember fondly my first encounter with an MX-5 in 1992 during a budget trip to the Hawaiian islands.
I’d booked a Jeep Wrangler 4x4 to do dirt-track exploring. But seeing rows of the little sports cars in the pick-up point, I did a U-turn. Aloha! I was smitten.
Part of the MX-5’s charm has been Mazda bravely resisting the temptation to mess too much with a winning formula.
Apart from the new engine, the MX-5 Mk4 is barely distinguishable stylistically from the aerodynamically sculpted lines of its 2015 predecessor.
Promising a more engaging drive, it accelerates from rest to 100kph in 6.5 seconds – 0.8 seconds quicker – and has a top speed of 219kph.
There’s a choice of seven colours, including Soul Red Crystal Metallic which around €1,000. Marginally shorter, lower and wider than the previous MX-5, it is the most compact version yet. But the only major styling tweak is a new design of 16in and 17in alloy wheels.
It’s come a long way from the more rounded original I drove along twisty mountain passes and heavenly sunset beach roads on my Hawaiian adventure.