Miatatude

Cars & Coffee

Daily DriverA little thing called Cars & Coffee, an informal car guy gathering, started out in California 7 or 8 years ago and has been spreading around the country. Mostly in big towns, but now some of the smaller places are picking up on it.

Turns out there has been one in Augusta, GA on the first Saturday morning of the month for a year now, but I never knew about it. Someone in the Miata Club brought it up at the yearly planning meeting and requested I put it on the MMC’s event calendar.

Shoot, I like cars and I like coffee, so Donna and I are going to go over there tomorrow to check it out. We also have an ulterior motive, it will count as a car show point in the Moss Motoring Challenge…

The 11-1/2 year-old, 149,000 mile Miata got a bath tonight. I even used a bit of some spray-on wax to gussy it up more gooder. When you get that close to the Emperor you can see it is starting to show its age in paint chips, scratches small dents, so I made up the little sign you see above to place on the dash.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1467

NA NA NA NB NB NB

na_na_na_DETAIL_grandeToday’s Blipshift shirt is another Miata design. Its a cute take on the minions from the Despicable Me movies because they always sound like they are going na na na when they laugh and it shows a minion in a first generation Miata, AKA the NA.

You only have a couple days to get in on owning one, so get out your charge card. There are now 5 Miata related designs from Blipshift, 4 of which feature the NA (all of which I own by the way) and one other featuring a 3rd gen car, the NC.

But I’m not falling for this one. Where is my car, an NB? Show me a 2nd generation Miata on a T-shirt and I’m buying a bunch of them.

Car 54k Where Are You?

On the way to the Valve Store(tm), that is where. The Purple Whale needed just to travel 1 mile from our driveway to reach the 54,000 mile total and it happened this morning on the way to work.

I’ve been hanging on every word and photo of the next generation Miata. Our first 2 Miatas were 1st generation models. The first car we kept for 6 years and the second one stayed around for eight. The current car is a 2nd generation model and has been in the family for going on a dozen years. We thought we were going to get a 3rd generation model about 4 years ago, until we sat in and drove one. Neither of us liked the look, the bath tub like feeling and the fact that they stole passenger foot well room for routing of the exhaust. Plus, the couple of inches it did gain in all directions made it appear a lot larger than the previous versions of the car.

The 4th generation car is supposed to be smaller than the 3rd in a most areas and is actually shorter than the tiny first car, but you can’t tell it from the pictures below, it looks larger.


On the plus side I like the looks, except for those tail lights, and a leak of the Japanese market brochure shows that it will quite possibly be available in something called Dynamic Blue Mica. On the down side, I can’t imagine the “bath tub” feel has improved any from looking at the door height in those photos and I’ve read that the seat has been lowered in the car for more head room and improved balance. We will definitely go sit in and drive a 4th generation model later this year when they become available and even though right now I think I want one, odds are the reign of the Emperor will continue…

Still !?!

The Emperor from day one has had a few minor scratches on the top of the passenger door. We actually didn’t notice them until after a few days of ownership, but the dealer was apologetic and had them touched up right away. Just like a Dent Wizard, the dealer had a Paint Wizard that he could call and they a great job. Even after 11 years, if you don’t know where to look you wouldn’t notice them.

At first I speculated that it was a dog owner who took his mutt with him on a test drive, but I found out later from a salesman who used to work at the dealer that my car was one of a half dozen or so that had their air bags stolen while they sat on the lot. The thieves were caught when a local detective put 2 + 2 + eBay together.

I could have swore that I wrote about this once before about 5 years ago when I had found a 1″ square stray bit of shattered auto glass while doing something under the passenger seat, but my trying to search for it on this here blog turned up nothing.

Why am I writing about it now you may ask yourself. I went through the DD drive thru on Sunday and my total came to $1.09, when I was handed the change I attempted to drop it one of the cup holders. All of it made it in except for the penny. When I got home I slid the passenger seat forward to look for it and I didn’t find a penny, but I did find another small chunk of that shattered glass.

Hard to believe that after 11 years and all the vacuuming of the interior that I could still find a one inch by one half inch piece of auto window glass, but I did.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1447

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

I Googled “miata night before Christmas” so I could put a post here tonight without having to actually write something. I knew I had seen one that was Miata related and sure enough there were a bunch of hits, including the 6th one that was from a site called “Life of Brian.” Eleven years ago I quoted the whole original poem. Some of the others were OK, but I opted for this one of unknown vintage on the Flyin’ Miata website, purveyors of all kinds of Miata goodies.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Counties,
The Miatas were parked, warm and safe from the Mounties;
The driving gloves had been packed, with loving care,
Knowing that next Spring they would still be there;

His ‘n her Miata owners were nestled snug in their beds,
While visions of forced-induction danced in their heads;
And mamma in her FM shirt, and I in my cap,
Were planning next year’s drives on a dog-eared road map,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I dropped my Miata Musings to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

What I saw made me weep and shook me to the core,
It was a Velocity Red Mica Mazdaspeed Miata, a two-thousand and four!
With a tall thin man driving, like a bat out of hell,
I knew in a moment it must be Bill Cardell.

“Now, ELVIS! now, TRACKDOG!
now, FILOU and TORO!
On, ANGEL on BABY!
on, CUZI and PHOENIX!
To the point of that apex!
cut the driving edge fine!
Now make that last mad dash!
all the way to the finish line!”

And I heard on the roof the sound of much fun,
The squealing and chirping of Toyo RA-1’s.
As I grabbed the car keys, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Bill came in with a bound.

He was dressed all in Nomex, from his head to his toe,
With tight fitting driving shoes so he could shift just so;
The sunglasses he wore sparkled with a dancing light,
And I thought to myself “How the hell can he see at night?”

Around the room to the stockings he raced,
Leaving Hard Dog Deuce bars and a FM Cannon Brace,
I even saw under the tree, by a moon so low and so pale,
Nothing less than a Da’Lan hitch and a brand new Tire Tail!

Bill was ready to leave, “Other slalomers yet to go!”,
And make his way through the white winter’s snow.
But he left mine till last, ‘fore he went up the flue,
I found in my stocking a brand new FM-II!

He sprang to his droptop, blipping the throttle with a roar,
And I knew right away the 2.0L was stroked, not bored.
I heard him exclaim, ere he squealed out of sight,
“KEEP the needle at REDLINE and CUT the corners Tight!”

The Emperor’s Successor?

Next Miata

Two month’s ago Mazda officially unveiled the next generation Miata (MX-5/Roadster) to the world. It was showed in a beautiful metallic shade of red called Soul Red. Yesterday at the LA Auto Show they showed the new car in Pearl White*.

In 1989 when the Miata was first introduced to the world it came in only single stage non-clear coated paint. Nowadays you would be hard pressed to find a non-metallic paint on any car at any price point. That 1990 car was only available in three colors; red, white & blue. So now that we’ve seen the car in red and white, the only thing left is to show us the car in a metallic version of that first blue.

For your viewing pleasure I have “photoshopped” a representation above. As an added bonus I have removed the stock wheels Mazda has been showing the car with and added the current wheels I have on the Emperor. Just a thought exercise mind you.

*Miata Forum investigative journalism at its finest, turned up that the Pearl White car is just the previous Soul Red car that has been repainted.

Serial Offender

Destination - Pier

Yesterday was not the first time I’ve sat stopped in a Miata in front of a police car with its light bar strobing for this same issue. The previous time was quite a while ago, might have even been in an earlier Miata, back before they kept track of warnings by filling out a form.

I was making a left from the two lane Price Avenue onto the five lane Whiskey Road. This intersection is atypical in that cross traffic have segregated turns at crossing and or entering Whiskey Road. This means that when it is your turn to turn left, you get a green arrow. I was a ways down the road when the light went green and the two cars who triggered the signal were long gone by the time got to the intersection, so I barreled through without slowing and entered the rightmost lane because in about a 1/4 mile I was turning into Kroger’s parking lot.

Sure enough, there was a city cop sitting at the head of the line pointed in the direction I was going. When his light went green he hit his flashing lights and caught me half way to my destination. I got a warning about how I should enter the left most lane when turning left onto a multiple lane road.

What both these incidents have in common is the car I was driving and the manner I was driving it, more so than the actual lane entered. In my humble opinion, had I been piloting a Toyota Camry with in a Camry-esque way, neither LEO would have bothered me.

This is from the South Carolina Drivers Handbook: A left turn often takes more preparation than a right turn. …Then turn into the lane nearest and to the right of the center line. This, anyone can understand, so perhaps that particular section 56–5-2120 should be written more like this.

I still probably won’t obey it in situations like this one or yesterday because of the impending right turn though.