Remember these things? This is the carbon of the second half of our trip of Guam – Tokyo – Seoul – Hong Kong – Taipei – Manila – Guam.
Filled up both cars with gas: I had January’s 700 points that I had to use by today or lose it. I also used up the 800 points that I had accumulated in February. One of those cars is going on an overnight trip tomorrow. I have an ambitious goal of 14 post offices between Sunday and Monday on the way back.
Another day and another photo album gone through. This one was a mix of things: photos and souvenirs of our 17-day honeymoon trip to Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong & Manila. Also some photos from our visits to Saipan and some random Guam photos, including a couple of airplane photos. But the two really nice photos weren’t mine. One shows two EA-3Bs flying in formation; the other is looking through a cockpit window of a third. I’m speculating that they were done by the VQ-1 squadron photographer. The prints were slightly fading, but endured living inside a photo album from 1978 a lot better than my snapshots.
I went through a couple more photo albums today. These were from the 1980-82 era. A lot of visiting family on three coasts: northeast, south, and northwest. Not many saveable photos; just scanned about five. There were a couple visits to national parks, one that I thought I had visited and one that I don’t remember visiting.
After visiting Carlsbad Caverns, I wondered just how many of our national parks I had visited. I came up with 18 of the 63, with 3 being questionable. The Everglades was a question until the second photo album from Florida vacations, where there were 20 or so bad photos of swamps and an alligator under the title card reading Everglades. The one park I didn’t remember was Mt. Rainier in Washington State. Must have been on a visit to big brother Jim’s place. So as it stands, it’s nineteen, with two of them being questionable, but I’m almost positive about Acadia in Maine.
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is iffy. I know I never went up in it, but I’m kinda sure there is a photo I took of the Arch. I do remember St. Louis is where our practically new 1974 Honda Accord’s clutch went out. It was towed to the local Honda dealer, and after hearing our story, they stuck us in next, and we were back on the road in a couple of hours.
Mom at the Meadowlands
– Lynn Vogel
If you noticed the title of this post was different, good eye. This is the point when the California folks wrested total control of the magazine from the Miata Club of America founders in Georgia. The word “Volume” was chopped from the magazine’s cover, replaced with the month & year.
Cars were slowing down all around, and the people inside were looking. Staring. Smiling. I was recently on the freeway, directly behind a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Since its recent showroom debut, the PT’s proven to be a winner, drawing crowds like you’d find at an ice cream stand on a hot summer day. So I knew that for as long as I drafted the silver stunner, I was going to witness people enjoying themselves in spite of themselves. I was going to be treated to a show. I knew, because the same thing happened to me back when I took an early trip in another example of an automotive triple-scoop.
Mazda’s Miata had only been on the market for a matter of weeks when I picked up a red B-package version from their North American headquarters in Irvine, California. I was to have use of it while making a couple of casual media appearances in Southern California. Lucky me? Yes.
I was no sooner on the I-5 heading south towards San Diego than it started. You’d have thought I was escorting Princess Diana to the prom. People were doing one of three things:
1 – Riding alongside and gawking. Everyone in the car. Teens, grannies, dogs. (By the way, doncha love when they hang out the window, tongues flapping in the wind?) (The dogs too.)
2 – Speeding up from some distance behind so that they could be (see 1 above).
3 – Passing by in some glazed-over, hours-at-the-wheel state and being jolted back to life by the defibrillator, they love shouting, “Honey, stop! Stop! STOP! What was THAT?!” when they were hazily daydreaming about the next rest stop. (The dogs too.)
Windows were rolling down, questions were being shouted, and I was certain that I was going to be the cause of the largest pile-up since Custer’s Last Haircut. At the very least I was in the eye of a hurricane and, as secret agent and Sunbeam Alpine driver Maxwell Smart would say, “loving it.” Oh, don’t think I didn’t enjoy it. Reflected glory and all that. Cool car? Must be a cool dude.
But I returned to warm after a few days (real ownership being about a year away). And though that brief time was certainly fun, my envy gave way to dread when I imagined what it must have been like for the true Miata owners, many of whom also had to pony up plenty o’ pennies just to be first on their block. It’s the kind of attention that makes one appreciate the existence suffered by movie stars or celebrity racecar drivers.
(Yikes! What must it be like for someone who’s both? Does Paul Newman ever wish he weren’t “Paul Newman”?) (Does Paul Newman race in the woods?) And yet, as stunning and shocking as the car was at first, once it became a more familiar sight, the non-owning public’s excitement largely dissipated.
Call it the phenomenon of phamiliarity: the unusual becomes usual as usual. It happens with technology, with human progress, and sadly sometimes, even affairs of the heart. With cars, we’ve seen this modern pattern as evidenced by the Miata repeated with Volkswagen’s New Beetle. To the horror of exterminators everywhere, people wanted bugs! Though I doubt, as the original ’50s and ’60s group of 2-seat sports cars now has a parallel in our modern roadster resurgence, that we’ll see other Beetle-ish cars in the future. Call me Cynical Stan, the Told-You-So Man, but I find it difficult to imagine that there is a new Corvair or Renault Dauphine in development at this time.
Once the PT Cruiser becomes as common as sliced bread, it’ll be hard for anyone to imagine that anyone was really that excited about it. Like sliced bread! It will inevitably follow along the path trod by the Miata and the New Beetle: cars that once captivated the public, won countless awards, didn’t require three nickels- worth of advertising, and then settled into happy and quiet lives amongst the Accamrys. Cars that once were all the rage.
My freeway exit appeared, and I banked away as the PT Cruiser continued on. I was never able to see the face of its driver. He was undoubtedly smiling, as was I; a relation born of shared experience. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia for those early days of Miata craziness.
I drove along a suburban country road in the late-day warmth. Spotting a bustling soft-serve ice cream stand, I pulled in for a treat. I sat in the car, enjoying a cone and watching people come and go. And just as I was finishing up and getting set to leave, a mom and dad passed right in front of me with their little girl in tow. She must have been six or seven years old. And she couldn’t stop looking at the Miata.
Lick Fork Lake Trailhead
I started going through our photo albums and scanning the images so I can toss them out. Why do this? They are just sitting there gathering dust, and they can be ignored in an online album just as easily as in a physical album. These are all from the early 90s; gosh, we were so cute. The last three were from the organized tours we took with Elk River Inn & Cabins. The first time was just a weekend, but the second one was a week-long adventure.
The bike on the right is mine; the one on the left is not Donna’s. The best I can think is that the bike belongs to a civilian contractor friend from my work center on the Navy base. We would occasionally ride the 16 miles to work together. I think we concocted an idea to ride from Meridian to Jackson, MS, the state capital, 90 miles away along US-80. Donna was to be our support vehicle for the ride over. And also so we could put our bikes on the car rack and drive back that evening or the next day.
Or it could have been taken during a nature break on a random longer Saturday ride with him…
– Ken Freeze
I actually liked this color. I didn’t buy one for a couple reasons, 1) Donna didn’t like the color and 2) I was very happy where I was in the 1995 Laguna Blue car. If I hade bought one, it would have had a black interior, light colored cars with light colored interiors have a lack of contrast. For some reason I’m OK with dark cars with dark interiors, but with dark colored cars, I would still prefer a lighter colored interior.
In 1998 when the second-generation Miata was introduced, it also saw the introduction of a new and striking color. While I absent from the North American market, the new color was seen in ads, web sites and brochures around the world. The color carried different names like Copper Mica, Evolution Orange, Mélange Gold and Evolution Gold depending on where the Miata was being marketed.
2000 Evolution Orange Miata
Then almost as suddenly as it appeared, it was discounted worldwide, creating what is by far the shortest color run in the entire history of the Miata. For 2000 only 644 Miatas were imported and just two 1999 models were shipped into the U.S. Worldwide, the number is not much greater. It is conceivable that worldwide there are less than 1,000 Evolution Orange Miatas total for both years. Numbers between 700 to 800 total have been voiced.
How could a color that was turning up seemly everywhere go out of production so soon? Simple – it was planned that way. “The intent was to only offer the color in the U.S. for one year.” said Product Marketing Plans Manager, Mazda North American Operations, Alan Childers. “Expectations were that although the color is an eye catcher, it never would be a big seller,” he said. “But it is a flashy color that really draws attention.” And, while the color may be a ‘head turner’ and get people into showrooms, in the end they generally bought a different color.
Childers said that the Evolution Orange was just a standard color with all the regular options and packages that could be ordered by dealers. The dealers placed their orders through their regional offices and the orders were sent to Japan for production. So, the end production number reflects the orders that were placed for it.
“In 1992, the Sunburst Yellow (of which only 1,519 were sold in the U.S.) had a planned production run of around 1,500 units from the beginning of the year, ” said Childers. The Sunburst Yellow Miatas were then sent to dealers along with all the other colors available that year.
Mazda obviously saw the PR value of such a striking color. In 1999, when the 500,000th Miata rolled off the assembly line it was Evolution Orange and the 2000 press car from Mazda North America was an Evolution Orange. The press car was the Miata whose photo appeared in the 2000 Miata press kit and was the Miata loaned to just about every major auto publication in the U.S. As a result, from late 1999 through most of 2000 hardly a word was written about the Miata that didn’t also include a photo of an Evolution Orange Miata. As a result, it was easy to get the impression Evolution Orange Miatas were everywhere.
In a very real sense, there isn’t anything special about the EO’s except their color. Unlike the M-Editions or the recent 10th Anniversary model, they are not all equipped alike or include any special equipment not available on other models. They were available with a wide variety of options and packages, from stripped down base models to fully loaded LS models. But what that has done is create even rarer sub sets. For instance, the number of LS models with tan interior vs. base models with black interior. It is conceivable that there may be several one-of-a-kind Evolution Orange Miatas running around America.
Like many of the other limited and special edition Miatas, a registry has been set up on an Internet Web site to follow the Evolution Oranges and to help owners get in contact with one another. The site is http://www.allroadster.com/libs/EORegister.htm gone. Besides owners being able to register their EO Miata, the site also has facts and statistical information as well as an Evolution Orange screen saver from Mazda New Zealand.
What is in store for this rare color is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s closest counterpart, the 1992 Sunbursts Yellow, has taken on almost a cult following, with used models selling for well above the value of their used siblings from the same year.
Will models with different packages become even more sought after? Leather interior vs. black interior, suspension package vs. appearance. And, what about the Evolution Oranges with automatics? Rumor has it that very few were produced worldwide. Could this be the model most sought after by collectors and museums 50 years from now? Only time will tell.
