Underwhelmed Again

Some­time ear­lier this week I received a cer­tifi­cate in the mail that enti­tled me to a $35 gift card just for test-driving a new MX-5 Miata. So guess what we did Sat­ur­day morn­ing? Right.

The inte­rior is not as bad in per­son as it looked in pic­tures, for that mat­ter the same can be said for the exte­rior. The gages are trendy in that they start at the 6 o’clock posi­tion, but are easy to read and they shouldn’t ever be hid­den because of the Miata’s first ever, tilt steer­ing wheel. Kudos’s to the return of a real oil pres­sure gage (although I didn’t really notice it.) The seats felt uncom­fort­able because they have tight­ened up the seat bot­tom bol­sters mak­ing the seat nar­rower. I bet that you would get used to it after a while though. The car is larger inside, but really only on the driver’s side. I could actu­ally get com­fort­able with the seat for­ward one notch unlike the cur­rent car. There is even a bit more head­room with the top up. They kept the 50/50 weight bal­ance, but in and effort to reduce polar move­ment by get­ting as much weight towards the cen­ter of the car as pos­si­ble they moved the engine back about 3 inches. To do this they moved the exhaust man­i­fold to the oppo­site side of the engine than the cur­rent car and it encroaches on the pas­sen­ger side of the inte­rior. Not only is there a swelling of the cen­ter tun­nel, but also the foot well has been pushed back. Donna is 5′-2″ and with the pas­sen­ger seat pushed back all the way, she can­not stretch her legs fully out! I remem­ber back in July when I sat in one at the gap it felt very tight on the pas­sen­ger side and attrib­uted it the cen­ter tun­nel intru­sion, but I see that it wasn’t just that. She was not uncom­fort­able, but just a lit­tle crowded. I would be uncom­fort­able on a trip over there though.

The door tops are mar­gin­ally higher, but you can prob­a­bly rest your elbow there com­fort­ably. Although, for what­ever rea­son, dur­ing our test drive I don’t think mine found its way there. The Z-fold top doesn’t tuck down as far as the cur­rent one, it stops about shoul­der high, thereby fill­ing in between the seats. The larger seats seem to block more from the back too. It all adds up to the inte­rior being more encom­pass­ing, makes you feel like you are sunk down in the car. The steer­ing wheel has audio con­trols in the spokes and looks like it was pulled from a Mus­tang, not a high point.

Exterior-wise, the fender flares are still polar­iz­ing; some­times they look geeky and other times not so bad. The front looks a lit­tle too cute; it reminds me of Nemo, the clown fish from that Pixar movie of a few years back. I’m sure the after mar­ket will take care of that in due time (a nice set of shark’s teeth in the mouth might help.) There were sev­eral things that glared out at me in the pic­tures I’ve seen that I didn’t like at all, head lights, marker lights, tail lights, third brake light, but stand­ing next to the car in per­son, they didn’t really bother me. One thing that really bugged me in the pic­tures I saw of the car with the top up was a funny hitch around the win­dow. Made it look like it was com­ing undone from the frame or some­thing. Turns out to be an extra folded seam along the edge of the top (hard to explain) that is a rain rail. Once again it didn’t seem so obvi­ous in per­son. The Z-fold top with one cen­ter latch is trick. The no boot thing is nice, sorta, I don’t like the looks of the empty spaces that show on each side, they’ll prob­a­bly make a nice spot to catch falling leaves.

They had a new black car parked right next to a black ’05 Maz­daspeed and you can tell they are related, but the newer one is larger look­ing. Not MG Midget to MGB larger, but more like a younger brother who grew up with bet­ter nutri­tion. It is still very much Miata­like, but with each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion of the car it creeps fur­ther from its roots. When we went from the first gen­er­a­tion car into our cur­rent 2nd gen­er­a­tion vehi­cle it seemed more grown up. It had a lit­tle more power and a lit­tle more torque. It was qui­eter, both inside and out. The inte­rior was much nicer in looks and mate­ri­als. Plus they added all those power good­ies that we take for granted in cars now days. The new Miata is prob­a­bly about the same incre­men­tal step up from our cur­rent car, as it was from the first gen­er­a­tion Miata we used to own before. I’m not so sure that is a good thing.

Donna may have said it best. While chat­ting with the sales­man after­ward, she told him she didn’t like it, “It felt a lot like rid­ing around in that Mus­tang con­vert­ible we rented a few years back.” If that is the case, it spells doom for us lovers of raw rear-wheel drive sports cars, but maybe suc­cess for Mazda as the car may attract a more main­stream buyer.