Yes­ter­day was the 2 month anniver­sary of Gar­net Red Miata own­er­ship. There are 2,380 miles on the odome­ter, com­pared to the 400 when we picked it up, so we are aver­ag­ing pretty close to 1,000 miles a month. Could have been more, but we didn’t take it to south FLA for Thanks­giv­ing. It may stay that way for a while as we dodged another high mileage trip by ditch­ing our plans to drive to Maine in April and instead fly.

After 60 days of own­ing a 2nd gen­er­a­tion Miata I guess it is time to revisit a post I made back in Octo­ber regard­ing my thoughts on the sis­ter car to this one I had used as a loaner while wait­ing the repairs on my beloved 1995 1st gen car. New stuff is in ital­ics.

The Good:
1) That new car smell. Still there, but fad­ing.
2) That new car feel. Every­thing is still tight and rat­tle free. I really like the feel of the turn sig­nal stalk, wiper switch and light switches. They are the same as on the old Miata, but I don’t know if they have been engi­neered bet­ter or the oth­ers felt that way too in the begin­ning.
3) Black leather from the fac­tory. Finally Mazda has elim­i­nated the need for hav­ing an ugly exterior/interior com­bi­na­tion just to get leather seats. This car has beige leather, which looks good set against the maroon look­ing paint.
4) Round Knobs for the HVAC con­trols. The slid­ing levers of the 1st gen­er­a­tion Miata are so 1950’s. Plus they have a nice feel too (see #2 above.)
5) Remote elec­tronic trunk release. — This may have been inevitable, see the bad #1. Cou­pled with a gas strut this would be awe­some. Still no gas strut, but still lovin’ this fea­ture. Now if I could only fig­ure out how to make one of the other but­tons work my garage door — heaven.
6) No zip back win­dow. Elim­i­nates a step in putting the top down. This one is def­i­nitely a keeper. To lower the top all I have to do is unsnap the two latches and throw the top back. A lot sim­pler and quicker than those fancy elec­tric tops. Although occa­sion­ally we would leave the top up with the back win­dow unzipped on the other car, it prob­a­bly won’t be missed.
7) With some new valve tim­ing trick­ery, they increased HP to 142 from 128 and flat­tened the torque curve, so the car is faster. Not leaps and bounds, but faster.
8) Big­ger brakes at both ends makes stop­ping almost as fun and excit­ing as accel­er­at­ing. I notice the stop­ping power more than the going power over the ’95.
9) OEM 16 inch wheels are the nicest I’ve seen on a Miata. And as a bonus they are easy to clean because there are no small open­ings where you can’t wipe eas­ily with a sponge.

The Bad:
1) The key­hole for open­ing the trunk is too low. It is hard to get the key in and turn with­out squeez­ing your fin­gers. With the inside release and the key fob but­ton, who uses this any­way? I may have once so far. They ought to just elim­i­nate it in the next redesign.
2) No zip back win­dow. Reduces the head­room, so tall dri­vers will now hit the fab­ric panel used to auto­mat­i­cally raise/lower win­dow. I have taken to lean­ing just a bit to avoid brush­ing my head against the top.
3) The speedome­ter is cal­i­brated in 20 MPH incre­ments with lit­tle ticks every 2 MPH, this makes it hard to tell your speed at a glance. I don’t know about your town, but where I live, we have speed lim­its of 25 & 45, not 22 or 48. I’m get­ting used to this, I still don’t like it, but I’m prob­a­bly one of the few dri­vers left on the road today that even looks at the speedo.
4) 6-speed trans­mis­sion. Always seems like I needed to shift. I know with more use I would have adjusted to it, but why didn’t they leave the 5 speed ratios as is and make 6 a real over­drive? (At least here in North Amer­ica.) This car has a 5-speed, so I feel right at home.
5) With the new valve tim­ing trick­ery, they may have increased HP and flat­tened the torque curve, but 1st gear to me seems to run out of steam. I really miss that kind of punchy accel­er­a­tion of old.
6) OEM16 inch wheels. They are big look­ing. And I haven’t weighed them, but I bet they are heav­ier than the 15″ Kosei Rac­ing Senekas I had on the old car. Plus tires will now be 50% higher in cost…

& The Ugly:
1) Splash Green Mica. Who you kid­ding, it’s teal. Looked odd but inter­est­ing in the mid 80’s on other cars, but why now on a Miata? The color grew on me, by the end of the 4 days I no longer gagged when I looked it. This now belongs in the good cat­e­gory. Although I swore I wanted another blue Miata, Gar­net Red with Parch­ment inte­rior is one sharp look­ing color com­bi­na­tion.
2) You call that car­pet? This stuff can only be char­i­ta­bly called floor cov­er­ing. Makes the cheap loop car­pet of the 1st gen­er­a­tion Miata seem like a $50/yd plush Sax­ony. This def­i­nitely still belongs here. It is shred­ded recy­cled plas­tic soda bot­tles dyed beige. I think a nice set of coco mats would make a big improve­ment (because that would leave so lit­tle “car­pet” show­ing.)
3) Where the heck is the exhaust note? When the Miata first appeared they had an ad that ran in mag­a­zines about how they tried 100s of muf­flers to get just the right sound (and they did,) but it is all but gone now from the fac­tory. When you get right down to it I miss the exhaust note of the 90 as it was even nicer than the 95. This is a mod that is on the back burner because until you actu­ally hear a muf­fler installed you don’t know if you can live with it on a daily basis. You would be buy­ing a $300 pig in a poke.
5) Plas­tic brushed alu­minum trim. Looked exactly like what is was, an after­thought and tacked on. I’m think­ing of see­ing if one of the mem­bers in the club with the black stuff would want to swap out for some “alu­minum.” It might look nice in an all black inte­rior.
6) Not nec­es­sar­ily lim­ited to the new Miatas, but the gap between wheel and fender is huge. There is like 3 inches there. Take a look at Audis or BMWs, those Ger­man engi­neers know how to stuff a wheel well. Why should I have to spend sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars on shorter springs that make the car ride stiffer just to make it look less like a 4x4 truck and more like a sports car?

I’m am still glad I upgraded, but that is just me, I wanted NEW. Ide­ally I would have liked to have trav­eled back 14 years and snatched that 1990 Mariner Blue ‘A’ pack­age from myself and brought it for­ward to today. Although I enjoyed the heck out of that first Miata, I really would enjoy now. Bob Hall, widely cred­ited as the Father of the Miata, had this to say about the dif­fer­ence between the 2 cars, “The NB (99 & up) is a bet­ter car, but the NA (1990–97) is a bet­ter Miata.” He is absolutely correct.