When I bought my MX-5 back in August, obviously I tried a few before plumping for one conveniently located on the other side of the country.
Up until I started my search, the only MX-5 I’d driven was Ian McHattie’s 16,000-mile concours example.
Ian's was a bog-standard UK-spec 1.8, so that meant no power steering and wind-up windows, and it was utterly brilliant. In fact, it was the reason I subsequently went searching for an MX-5 of my own.
The first one I tried was with a local dealership, and it had some suspension tweaks. A few hundred yards down the road, I summed up those tweaks by assuming that the suspension had actually been removed.
It was terrible – bone-shakingly hard and devoid of the finesse that Mazda had spent the GDP of a small country engineering into the standard car.
There’s a huge aftermarket scene for the MX-5, but when it’s so good out of the box, I was left wondering why you’d bother changing it.
It was therefore with a degree of trepidation – and some well-practised polite noises – that, after a fair bit of banter, I hopped into the Mk1 run by Dan Trent on our sister website – and open-plan office neighbours – PistonHeads.
Dan’s car is a Eunos, so there’s air-con and electric windows, plus power steering, which I must admit was a welcome addition around the streets of South West London. It’s also had some suspension work, and runs on 15in wheels rather than the standard 14s.
