Brian Buys A Miata

My wife Donna and I moved to Aiken in May of 1989. After set­tling into our house and our new jobs, I thought a nice reward would be a new car. Hav­ing dri­ven noth­ing but small eco­nom­i­cal cars up until this point, I thought this time I would try for sporty. What I really wanted was a brand new MGB. I had always wanted one, ever since my high school days, unfor­tu­nately they hadn’t made them new since then either, about 15 years..

Although the Honda mar­ket­ing peo­ple would tell you the Pre­lude I was cur­rently dri­ving was “sporty,” I had a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion. There were only three cars out there that I could think of that fit the bill, the Honda CRXsi, the Pon­tiac Fiero and the Toy­ota MR-2. Being a Honda per­son, my first incli­na­tion was to buy the CRX. But they had just restyled it and I wasn’t real sure if I liked the way it looked. They had just got­ten the Fiero right, with the GT model, V-6 & fake fast­back look, but lin­ger­ing bad press left me doubt­ful. The MR-2 was an inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­ity, but its price was a lit­tle more than I (we) wanted to spend.

Need­ing to do more research, I headed to the mag­a­zine aisle at the local store. Here I knew I’d find some guid­ance in the lat­est edi­tions of Road & Track, Auto­mo­bile, etc. There on the cover of the July 1989 Car and Dri­ver was a pic­ture of Mazda’s newest car, the Miata. It was small, it was sporty and it was a con­vert­ible, but it looked a lit­tle too “cute.” The surfer dudes and chicks pos­ing with it didn’t help either. The arti­cle was very com­pli­men­tary and even hinted at the true sport­ing nature of the car.

That week­end we headed over to Rader Mazda (Andy Jones didn’t exist at the time) in Augusta to check out a Miata. They had a red one on the lot. It was not for sale, but it could be test dri­ven. The sales­man, whose name I have for­got­ten, agreed to let me drive it, but only after he drove it to spot a few miles away. Osten­si­bly to get me away from busy Wash­ing­ton Road, but I sus­pect it was really because he liked to drive the car. After just a short trip up Stevens Creek Road I knew this was my next car, it just felt right (sounded right too.) When we got back to the lot I told him that he was going to let me take my wife for a drive to see if she would like it. This was in fact true, but I had a sec­ondary motive as well. I wanted to go for another drive.

Donna and I agreed that we would buy a Miata, just not red, nei­ther of us like red. The three of us gath­ered around the desk in our salesman’s cube and informed him of our deci­sion. He said, “Great, I need a non-refundable $500 deposit.” “That gets you on the wait­ing list.” As I handed him the check I asked, “How long is the list?” “Well, I’m not sure, about 10 or 12 peo­ple,” he replied. “How long a wait will it be,” I asked. “We are sup­posed to get 6 a month, so maybe two months,” was his reply.

I called after 6 weeks, he was pur­posely eva­sive. I couldn’t find out how long the list was, where I was on it or even how many cars they had sold so far. After 2 months, I called again. The results were the same. I still know noth­ing. I made a sign to hang out­side my cubi­cle at work: Brian Bog­a­r­dus, beloved co-worker and friend, has been held hostage by the Shi­ite Mazda dealer for 65 days. I put up a new num­ber every day. 66 days. 67 days…70…80…

Read­ing in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines I found out that this was some sort of phe­nom­e­non. I am not alone, there are hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands like me out there wait­ing too. Cer­tain regions of the coun­try were allot­ted more Miatas. Larger deal­ers got more than smaller ones. Less patient folks were dri­ving great dis­tances. Should I head to Florida or maybe Atlanta? Some deal­ers were get­ting $20,000 for a car with a list price of $13,800. There were reports of $25,000. That reminds me, we never did dis­cuss price before I got on the wait­ing list.

After three months I called and asked for my non-refundable deposit back. I couldn’t take the wait any­more. The sales­man said that if I really wanted my money back I could have it. “But you are close to the top of the list,” he said. “How close?” I asked. More eva­sive­ness. I’ll wait some more.

Two days later I get a call, “I’ve got a red ‘C’ pack­age that is yours if you want it.” I am tempted, but decline. There was the red prob­lem, plus I didn’t want all those options. I wanted a base model so I could put my own sound sys­tem in, with a CD player, etc. A week later, another call, there is a white base model with my name on it. “I have to think about this, let me call you back,” I said. Donna is not real happy with white, but she can sense my frus­tra­tion. I ask sev­eral of my co-workers, some say wait and some say go for it. I call the sales­man back and tell him I’ll wait on a blue. The hostage sign gets a revi­sion, I didn’t think I would need three places for numbers.

The call comes on day 108, “I have a blue ‘A’ pack­age. Do you want it?” “I’ll be there at 5 this after­noon,” was my reply. My first expe­ri­ence in a Miata was the test drive way back at the end of July, it was almost the mid­dle of Novem­ber before I got drive num­ber two. By the time all the paper­work is signed and my friendly sales­man explains what all the but­tons and knobs do, the sun is down and the tem­per­a­ture is in the low 50’s. Dri­ving home on I-20 with the top down I didn’t notice the cold at all.