Miatatude

Accidental Drive Homework #5

Leave a Comment

I picked up the Miata from the dealer on the 28th and have driven it every day since. Today there was a Miata club event that I was going to attend. It started over on the west side of town, so I picked the “Avoid Highways” option so as to not get in inbound Portland traffic on I-84. I still arrived early at the meet-up spot because, well, I started early. By this time I’d probably put a couple hundred miles on the car, but it wasn’t until I started driving with the group that I noticed that the steering wheel was not lined up correctly. It appeared to be about 5 or 6 degrees off to the left.

So after the Miata event, instead of going straight home, I stopped into the Mazda dealer. They looked at it, confirmed it was off an pulled into a bay. After waiting a couple hours, they decided that they needed more time and ordered up a Lyft for me to go home in.

Somewhere in those couple hours I got bored. The Mazda dealer shares a lot with the Toyota dealer, so a quick estimate of total cars there is 200 maybe. For the heck of it, I trolled both dealers’ used car pages and came up with one manual transmission in my price range, but it was nothing I’d be interested in. So I went outside and wandered around the lot. On the second to last row there was a Hyundai Elantra N, hmmm. I was interested in the Hyundai Veloster N, but couldn’t find a manual anywhere near here, maybe I should take the Elantra for a spin.

Car #8: 2025 Hyundai Elantra N. $31k with only six thousand miles on it. I went into the Toyoto place and asked if I could drive the car. They hooked me up with a salesperson, and we went out to look at it. She wanted to pull it out of its slot, but when she opened the door and saw that it was a manual, she let me do it. I didn’t want to get on the freeway, so we just did a few miles on a rectangular surface street loop. Even though the power-to-weight ratio is better in the Hyundai, it didn’t feel substantially faster. The first thing I noticed was the digital gauge cluster; it was exactly like the one in Santa Fe Sally’s 2023 Hyundai Tucson, which was a letdown. It is also hampered by the same thing a couple cars I thought were possibilities have: an extra foot and a half of unnecessary length.

I’ve lined up a test drive on that Porsche 718 Cayman, and then I think the only thing left would be to get in a Golf R of the same vintage as the GTI…

Oh My, What Big Teeth You Have


I’ve had all kinds of teeth in the mouth of my Miatas. The first were the alligator ones that I kept on the 1995 all the time for the last three years of my ownership in the early 2000s. As a joke, somewhere in that same time frame I bought some rabbit teeth, took a picture of the car, and then removed them. A few years later they were given away to someone on the Miata Forum that was looking for those kinds of teeth, probably to make that same kind of joke as well. When I bought the 2003 car, I bought some vampire teeth, which I put on just for the month of October every year.

All those teeth came from the same manufacturer, and they had both upper and lower teeth. Somewhere along the line they stopped making them. This year, feeling nostalgic, I looked to see if someone, somewhere, had picked up where the OG company left off. Nope, but Etsy to the rescue, I found some fangs. So you can see both fangs, I had to remove my front plate, I hope I don’t get a ticket this month…

Same Species

Came out of the trail that is my favorite morning latte walk and found this. I was tempted to move the Miata, but the size disparity was great enough even with the two vehicles separated by 15 feet. Over the years I’ve taken a few of these types of photos, and every time I am reminded of the West Wing episode where Allison Janney is involved in a walk and talk with Kristin Chenoweth.

Your High Beams Are On

A couple months ago the right turn signal started to not turn on every time I tried to engage it. It is not a big deal to most folks, but I was taught very early on to use my blinkers. It is not too hard, and it is just part of driving for me. But the car is a quarter-century old, and things are not going to stay working forever.

A little more than three weeks ago I took it in to the dealer to have them do a 5,000-mile service. While I was there, I asked about how much it would cost to fix the blinkers. They said they’d have to troubleshoot to see if it was broken and then find out even if they could get a new one. The next day I was told it is not repairable; if you want to replace it, it’ll be around $500 for parts and labor. Or we can just put it back in, and that’s going to be just $75 for the diagnostics. I’ve already dumped enough money into the car; what’s another four hundred bucks? They wouldn’t get the parts in before I was headed on the Arizona trip, so I told them, “No worries, I’ll pick it up when I get back.”

So on Wednesday, I went to get the Miata back. Nice, it works every time, and there is a brand-new turn signal stalk feel. This morning when I went out to go grocery shopping, you could tell fall is coming, it was still slightly dark, so I turned on the headlights, and the high beams were on. I could see the high-beam dash light on. You push or pull the stalk fore and aft with the center being normal, forward with a click for high beams, and a spring-back pull backwards for flash-to-pass. The stalk position was centered, not in the high-beam position. I wiggled the stalk, and the high beams would go off or on.

After grocery shopping I just drove the Miata back to the dealer. They wanted to verify the issue and see if there was an easy fix. Half an hour later I was told they have to get another new stalk. Here’s an interesting thing about the replacement stalk, it’s the second one they had to order. The first one was lost in transit. It was the last one in the US. Remember, a 25-year-old car and the last time they used them in Miatas was in 2015. This one came from the motherland, Japan, and they expedited it so they could have the car ready when I got back. They aren’t going to expedite this one, so they are going to put the old new one back in, until the part gets here.

At least from Japan to here, the part doesn’t have to transit the Strait of Hormuz…

Red Sox chances of making the Wild Card round in the 2026 playoffs: 85.8%

 

I May Have Been Premature

West Salish Pond


 
After my morning walk around the Salish Ponds, I swapped the two cars from front to back. I’ve got my first real mod for the GTI coming, so I wanted it in the back near the workshop for tool availability, and also I needed the Miata out front because there is a club event Saturday. While the Miata was out, I opted to take a quick drive to the store to pick up a couple things. I took the long way home, and I may have been premature yesterday; I can’t get rid of it. Even with a bit of traffic in the first half of the drive and with the top up because it was sprinkling, it was still a fun car to be in.

End of the Line?

I was going to title this post “The End Of An Era?” but swapped it to the current one. Why, you might ask? When I opened WordPress, the song Radio Paradise was playing was by the Travelling Wilburys, called “End of the Line.”

I took the GTI to the local VW dealer to have them run the system checks they normally do when someone comes in for service. I also had them do an oil change because, for all I knew, it was the original 5-year-old oil. The car has only 14,000 miles on it, and that is below the synthetic oil lifespan. An hour and a half later, with a clean bill of health, we headed home. I’m really liking this car, and I’ll be driving it almost exclusively for the next 5 months. The Miata will get limited attention until late March.

Do I really need two cars? This led to a dark corner of my mind; maybe it’s time to get rid of the Miata. I know, sacrilege! I’ve owned a Miata for 35 years, and they are still a blast, but the GTI is 80% a blast. I hate the idea of it just sitting around; it should be blasting around winding roads, not staring at the backside of a Golf.

Ask me again in a week.

A Tale Of One Year Of Ownership

This is not the first time I’ve put stickers on the trunk lid. I started doing it in the late 90s, as evidenced by the photo to the right. This is from 2001, and by the time I traded in the ’95 on a brand new ’03, the trunk lid looked more like the one above. Thing is the dealer left the stickers on there when they resold the car. A year or so later the 2nd owner showed up, by happenstance, at a Miata Club event at the local car drive-in. She said that she really liked the stickers and had started adding some of her own.