I Bought A Mazda MX-5 And Now I Finally Understand Why Miata Is Always The Answer

I have never thought of myself as a Mazda MX-5 Miata person. I’ve always loved the way they looked, but usually found myself gravitating towards weirder cars like the Saturn Sky or the MGF. Well, I just brought home a 2016 Mazda MX-5 ND. I finally joined the Miata club, and I now see why the Miata is pretty much the standard for an enthusiast-oriented roadster.

This car sort of came out of left field. My wife and I crossed into the New Year with a mission to offload a car or a few from my fleet to be replaced with a newer, nicer car. The idea was that we’d get a car with some prestige, class, and luxury so that seemingly everyone in the world would stop hating on my wife for driving her 2012 Scion iQ. Seriously, I’ve written an entire series of pieces about how everyone, including my mom and Sheryl’s best friend, thinks poorly of Sheryl because she drives a tiny car.

Solving this car problem has been interesting. Sheryl and I have come close to pulling the trigger on a car several times since the beginning of the year. She even pre-ordered a Hyundai Genesis while dosed up on anesthesia. But every single time, we pumped the brakes before proceeding.

I had to get to the bottom of this, and discovered that my wife’s hesitance to buy one of these cars made sense. She loves her Scion iQ and doesn’t want to get rid of it. She also doesn’t want to spend tons of money on a car that she would be buying purely to get the haters off her back. So, every time we got to the point of exchanging money, she’d back out.

While all of this was happening, I was slowly thinning the herd. Amazingly, I found a museum that’s interested in my bus. With some luck, it’ll be off to a new home maybe this spring. If not, I have a sadder, but effective backup plan already secured. That alone will free up a bunch of money and lift a ton of stress off me. I then turned on the fleet. First to get the boot was the 2003 BMW X5. Next, I stared down the 2012 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI outside.

As I prepared my Facebook listing, Sheryl expressed that she’ll be deeply saddened to see the car go away. The Volkswagen was one of the first cars we bought together when we were dating six years ago. She’s unexpectedly attached to this car.

I noted that it had to be done. I didn’t even want the car anymore, and it was just sitting. She then asked if she could have it. Sure, I don’t see why not. So, I handed her the keys and the paperwork. Sheryl’s been driving the car for about the past week, and thus far, things have been great. The benefit of giving her the VW is that she can choose what car she wants to drive for the occasion, and thus, it’s not just one car getting a ton of miles on it. I somewhat recently replaced this car’s dual-mass flywheel, tires, water pump, coolant, and timing belt, so hopefully it has some trouble-free miles in it.

While I was going through my fleet looking for more cars to sell and preparing the next adventures for my bus, we also picked up a car. There was one option we hadn’t considered. What if we got one car that wasn’t from a luxury brand, but was so cool that nobody would complain? What if it were a car we could both enjoy, rather than a compromise to keep the peace, or another beater?

That car? Well, it turned out to be a Miata ND.

Making A Better Miata

The fourth-generation Mazda MX-5, known as the ND, is almost an anachronism in today’s world. When the ND burst onto the scene in 2014, it was a breath of fresh air. Much of the automotive world had accepted that cars would get bigger, heavier, and more complicated with each generation. But the ND wasn’t that.

Instead, when the ND made car enthusiasts collectively gasp, it was because this was a new generation car that sort of went back to the basics. The ND is smaller and lighter than the NC that came before it, while avoiding modern car tropes. The ND has beautiful lines, few creases in its bodywork, and an uncluttered engine bay. Even the engine is proudly displayed like it’s a work of art. But how? Just how did Mazda pull off such a stunning vehicle in today’s world?

The stories of the previous Miata generations, the NA, NB, and the NC, have been told a million times, so I’m going to skip straight to the ND. At around the 10-year anniversary of the ND’s unveiling, Chris Perkins of Motor1 published an exclusive history of the ND. The story features direct quotes from the people who made it happen.

According to the story, development started in 2007 for a platform to underpin a next-generation MX-5 and a new RX-7. After the Great Recession hit, the plan was reduced to just finding a new Miata platform. The engineers had an important job, too, because the MX-5 NC landed with a thud with some enthusiasts. From Motor1:

Nobuhiro Yamamoto (Retired Program Manager, ND Miata): Whether it’s performance, fuel economy or collision safety… the NC was superior to the NB. However, when you ask a customer, “Is this a car you want to buy,” things don’t work out as you plan. It’s not that easy, especially with Japanese customers.

They would say, “Yamamoto-san, the NC is a great car, it’s a safe car, but it’s just not as fun as the NA at all.” Every engineer, it struck their heart. They felt it right away, the pain.

Ken Saward (Design Director, Mazda North American Operations, 1990-2021): When the NC was done, it was a different time in the company, and they were struggling a little bit. So they tried to combine a lot of the technology and chassis elements with the RX-8. So that car was kind of heavy, it just lost its kind of cuteness, if you will, the honesty of the first car.

Motor1‘s piece, which I highly recommend reading, continues that the team realized that Miata buyers either got their car because it looked cute, because they wanted a pure sports car, or because they wanted a convertible grand tourer. They also realized that the NC’s successor had to go back to the soul and the feeling of the beloved NA.

This led to an interesting split. The team in Japan wanted the ND to look like a modern NA. However, the team in America was disappointed that the Miata had a reputation for being a “hairdresser’s car” and that they did not see Miatas showing up to Cars and Coffee events. The American team noted that the car didn’t have any respect on the street and that owners were mocked for their cars.

The Americans initially looked at cars like the Chevy Camaro, Ford Mustang, BMW Z4, and the Jaguar F-Type for inspiration, but Japan shut that down. Still, the Americans wanted the new Miata to be masculine to finally put that “hairdresser’s car” thing to bed. To get their point across, the American Mazda team went to car shows and asked owners of BMW M3s and such how they felt about the Miata. Then, they played a 10-minute reel of those honest reactions to the team in Japan.

In the end, Japan and America aligned. The new car would be small and light like an NA, but with a striking design of its own. That’s why the ND is the first Miata that doesn’t exactly have a joyful face. The vehicle itself doesn’t even say “Miata” anywhere on it.

A New Car That Actually Lost Weight

Cutting weight would become an obsession in the ND project. The lightest NA weighed 2,072 pounds (940 kg), and it was nothing but weight gain ever since. The NB was around 2,270 pounds (1,030 kg) while the NC was around 2,447 pounds (1,110 kg). The team realized that making a modern car the weight of an NA was ambitious, but getting the new car under a ton (1,000 kg) was possible.

Motor1‘s story continues that the development team developed a strategy to remove at least one gram from every component. A car has thousands of parts, so one gram adds up quickly. The story continues with how obsessed Mazda was with weight reduction:

There are countless examples of the gram strategy applied throughout the ND. The base of the windshield has holes drilled where no one can see them; the tailpipes lack decorative finishers and instead are polished to a shine; the transmission casing is smooth; the rearview mirror housing was shaved thinner; there’s no cover on the battery; the wheels have four rather than five lugs. Yamamoto recalls one fun example in the form of the seat-adjustment handle.

Yamamoto: Up until then, all Mazdas used something we refer to as a “towel bar,” the bar that goes along the side of the frame, and that’s for ease of use. From the gram strategy, this is completely unnecessary, and so another way we saved weight was changing from a towel bar to a very thin lever with the assumption that it’s your own car that you love, so you’ll get used to it right away.

Nakayama: I remember an interesting episode from a review of all the components. There was a guy, an HVAC engineer, who had a presentation there. His job is to make the cabin cold and warm. But the team just said we don’t need that kind of an A/C function in the Miata. This engineer looked so sad. I remember his facial expression to this day. He said that he joined Mazda because he wanted to make the world’s best car. But now, he was told that we didn’t require this A/C function… During that review, the top R&D guy told him, “You have to make the lightest, most compact HVAC system.” Hearing that comment, the engineer’s eyes started to shine. We’ve got tons of these stories.

The team accomplished something amazing. Not only was the ND physically smaller than the NC, but at 2,183 pounds, it was more than 200 pounds lighter than the NC.

Apparently, one of the bigger debates between the American and Japanese teams was about the engine. Japan wanted to give the ND an engine no larger than 1.5 liters. They wanted this car to be pure and simple like the NA, after all. The car was to be fun to drive, not necessarily fast. But Americans and Europeans do drive their cars faster. Eventually, late in the development, the Americans were able to get their wish granted, and the ND would get a 2.0-liter four from Mazda’s lineup. Apparently, this engine was approved so late in development that the vehicle’s structure was already set, and there wasn’t enough time to tune the engine specifically for the Miata. Power upgrades would end up waiting until 2019 for the ND2 update.

One of the final parts of the equation was the suspension. Instead of making the Miata super tight like most sports cars, Mazda made the ND soft so that it could be driven on broken American roads without shaking fillings.

The ND was unveiled on September 3, 2014, and went into production in 2015. Since then, the car has gotten rave reviews from all over. From all accounts, it sounds like Mazda achieved its goal. It righted the NC’s wrongs and then some.

I Fell In Love

But it’s funny, I never thought of myself as a Miata person. I adored the looks of every generation of Miata, but drooled over other cars. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of driving down Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive in a bright yellow Saturn Sky Red Line. Later, as an adult, I’d fall for the MGF roadster and the Honda Beat.

That was until 2016 or 2017, when I went to the Chicago Auto Show. Every year, Mazda would have test drives just outside McCormick Place. These drives would be short, maybe five minutes at the most, and you wouldn’t go faster than 25 mph. One year, Mazda had the MX-5 down there available for a test drive. I loved doing the test drives just for the fun of it, and thought why not? Let’s just have some fun. The Chicago Auto Show used to be a big deal for Mazda. It was the show the NA debuted at back in 1989!

A Mazda representative walked me outside, and we got into a Soul Red ND. It was in that instant that I fell in love. I felt like I was in the cockpit of a fighter jet. I had a large round tachometer ahead of me and beyond that, a hood that bulged around the fenders and scooped down toward the middle. My butt was only inches off the ground.

Sure, I drove no faster than 25 mph during the test drive, and sure, it was an automatic, and the roof was up. But it didn’t matter; I was head over heels. I told myself that I’d have an ND one day. Sadly, it just wasn’t in the cards. At the time, I was fresh into a loan on a new 2016 Smart Fortwo and did not work a job that supported a second car.

I would pay off the Smart years later, but still decide against buying an ND. The ND had a base price of $24,915 back in the day, and nowadays it starts at $30,430, which comes before an additional $1,235 destination charge. If you’ve read my work for long enough, I buy basically every vehicle I own for well less than $10,000.

Nowadays, a solid 2016 ND is worth about 50 percent of its original price. So, we finally did it. We picked up a 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata Grand Touring in Ceramic Metallic.

Our Miata

There are a lot of early NDs on the market, but this one really caught my attention. I noticed that it had a few interesting upgrades. For starters, the trim surrounding the A-pillars is silver rather than black. The mirror caps are silver, too. Then, there was the interior, which had gorgeous brown leather seats. I further noticed that the vehicle’s previous owner, its original owner, put PPF on the paint and took such great care of the vehicle that there’s barely a scratch on anything. Even the pair of keys looked completely new.

I later noticed some other great bits like an HKS Legamax Premium exhaust, leather A-pillar trim, a metal start button, a silver tachometer face, Wilwood Brakes, a Braille Battery, and silicone cooling hoses. When I dug a little deeper, I saw that the previous owner already added Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality.

As much as I love ND Grand Touring’s interior, I didn’t like how the vast majority of the early NDs had black leather. Tan was an available option, but it appears that few people actually went with it. The handful of tan cars I found either had too many miles, too much wear, or were priced too high.

Besides, in my opinion, my seats are better than the factory. The color looks sort of red in camera shots, but it’s more brown in person. The leather is rich, thick, and well-padded. It also gives off an awesome aroma. I haven’t smelled leather this pleasant since I sat in Autopian co-founder Beau Boeckmann’s Aston Martin Cygnet.

So, I signed the dotted line and brought the “Miat” home. Since then, Sheryl and I have been using it as a couple’s car. We’ve taken it on dates and on random drives. She’ll be learning how to drive manual so she can take it to court and to client meetings, too. Early reactions have been spectacular. We’ve already gotten tons of compliments, thumbs up, and even a few pictures.

The various mods had me curious. These weren’t the mods of someone who just threw random money at their car. Clearly, the person who owned this car knew what they wanted. So, I took the photos I had of our car and then reverse image searched them. Google suggested that my car was similar to one on Miata.net. I compared the Carfax to the car on Miata.net. Both cars were in the same town in North Carolina for about a decade. Both cars had almost all of the same mods. The owner of the car on Miata.net stopped posting only a month before the Carfax noted the vehicle’s sale.

Once I gathered my evidence, I popped the question to the person on the forum. My suspicions were correct. The previous owner of our Miata was an enthusiast through and through, and he had a reason for everything. He thought Mazda’s leather was not premium enough and not padded enough, so he got custom leather from leatherseats.com. The new seats have just enough extra padding to make them both more comfortable while raising me up about an inch compared to a regular Mazda leather seat.

He then thought the interior had too much plastic and ordered a custom leather dashboard pad and A-pillar trim. Other odds and ends inside include a silver start button, a color-matched parking brake handle, and a silver tach. The result, I think, is an interior that’s elevated over the stock Mazda one.

Apparently, this was really just the car’s final form. An earlier iteration of the original owner’s leather experiment had the car with a whole lot of red inside. There were a lot more mods, too, including wheels, a tune, Continental DWS06+ tires, a Cravenspeed shifter, and more. But in the end, he would sort of go back to a more stock setup. This is part of why the car looks so great. Not only was it taken care of, but a lot of the parts that are currently on it weren’t on the car for much of its mileage. I was confused by the silicone hoses, and he even had an explanation for that. He wanted to keep temps down when driving the car hard in the peak of summer.

The only damage that I could see is at the very bottom of the front bumper, where road debris punched a tiny hole. But you sort of have to look for it to find it. I can put a splitter on the front if it really bothers me.

The original owner told me he’s taken the car as far west as California and as far north as Wisconsin. He loved the car, but in his advancing age, it was becoming more difficult to get in and out of the vehicle and challenging to work the clutch.

The Answer

So now it’s in the hands of Sheryl and me. This is not one of the cars that gets stuffed away into my secret warehouse. We’re paying good money for this car. In fact, it’s the most expensive car I’ve ever had in my possession, so it’s getting used. We’ve already put some 500 miles on it! While a Miata wasn’t on Sheryl’s bucket list, she’s discovered that it’s like the Mazda3 she wanted when she was younger, but probably even cooler.

The car is also more than fast enough for me. Power comes from a 2.0-liter Skyactiv-G four with 155 horsepower and 148 lb-ft of torque. That’s backed by a six-speed manual that’s so clickety snickety. Apparently, that’s good enough for a 60 mph sprint in the mid-six-second range. Yes, it’s technically slower than my 260 HP Saturn, but who cares? It’s so much fun!

I sent the MX-5 through what few curves I’ve been able to find out here in farm country, and the Miata was just beautiful in how it handled them with grace. I felt like the Miata pivoted around me. It was also so engaging to drop a gear, power out of a corner, and scoot to redline, and then grab another gear.

I suddenly see why people love the Miata so much. It’s about the whole experience. Driving this car keeps you involved. You feel like you are one with the vehicle and that your every move makes a difference. I also get why some folks obsess over balance. The Miata is so predictable and stable. It feels like you’re at the center of the action. A Miata can go fast, but it just makes you work to do it.

But I think what’s most important is that a Miata is just plain fun. Yeah, I can go a million miles per in a 700 HP pickup truck, and sure, the Lotus Emira I loved so much had more or less “point and click” handling at insane speeds. But the Miata? You’ll have a smile county-wide as you wind a corner at only 50 mph.

I think the biggest revelation through all of this was learning that, yeah, maybe I am a Miata person. But maybe not a track junkie or a modder. We don’t plan on doing anything crazy. No power mods, track days, or anything like that. I’m well aware that the early NDs have a reputation for having fragile transmissions, and I’m not in a rush to tempt fate. Instead, we will both use it as a grand tourer. That’s how we’ve used it thus far. On Valentine’s Day, we sort of just spent the whole day in the car, enjoying a balmy 54-degree Midwestern day with the top down.

So, I hope that with a few more fleet changes this year, I will have even less stress, more time to Miata, and Sheryl can finally take a breather or two. Seeing her smile at this car makes it all worth it. As it turns out, I guess Miata really is the answer to everything.

Photos: Mercedes Streeter