MazdaSpeed MX5

Gareth Wardell sums up the cheeky Mazda MX5 roadster

The Chinese proverb, “Why bother to clean the rice if it’s selling briskly?” sums up the phenomenal success of Mazda’s MX5. Introduced in 1989, over 800,000 have been sold world-wide, accomplished with an occasional design tweak and new safety feature, a testament to the sheer “rightness” of the original design. It has go-kart like handling, but enthusiasts have sought more power. In desperation for more oomph fans of the chuckable little roadster have been shoe-horning everything from air induction kits to V8 engines under that lithe bonnet. Before an all-new model arrives, Mazda offers its salute to a great roadster with a hot edition, the MazdaSpeed MX5 – turbocharged.

For a brief time in the early nineties, Brodie Brittain Racing supplied an officially sanctioned turbo for the UK market. There’s a well-designed, popular after-market supercharger available, but only now has Mazda decided to give the engine the wallop it has always needed. Before I compare this (probably) last MX5 with the original version I own, here’s an insider’s view of its history.

Backfill

With all the wild choice we have today in sports cars, it’s difficult to imagine how few roadsters existed before the MX5 gave the car industry a well aimed kick in the cohunes. Automobilia naturalists had sparse choice: expensive exotica Ferrari and Lamborghini, limited production TVRs, (still considered a kit-car company back then) eccentric Morgans, and 944 Porsche convertibles -- convertible isn’t as romantic sounding as sports car.

And in answer to the umpteenth plea from MG lovers to restart production of that beloved marque, a snooty British executive opined, “Our weather is not conducive to open air driving. Drivers have long abandoned the sports car market.”

Like countless car suits before him he was spectacularly wrong. The car industry abandoned sports car enthusiasts. In a way, it’s just as well he was blind as well as deaf, otherwise we might have been given more sports cars that rattled, dripped oil, leaked, had Smith’s electrics, and live rear axles. Hold on, they did give us one: the Rover MGR V8.

The arrogance got worse. At a car show where the MX5 stand was crowded with admirers and the MGR stand conspicuously quiet, a Rover executive was heard to sneer of the MX5, “It’s Japanese. It doesn’t have any sports car heritage.” Exactly what did he think twenty-two years of MG non-production constituted? It took a cynical sales exercise from BMW in the Z3 to alter everything. After that it was open season.

The MX5 is not a copy of the Lotus Elan. The Elan was one of many 60s European sports cars that Mazda studied. It borrowed Colin Chapman’s philosophy, “speed through lightness,” but look closely at the MX5 and you can see the influence of the Jaguar E-Type in the bonnet’s raised swage line, the Alfa Romeo chrome handles, and the traditional green glow of the dash dials. The final design was honed at Mazda R&D in California.

Yes, the MX5 is a clever amalgam of design cues to jog our sub-conscious but that isn’t enough; the magic ingredient for big sales is a reliable Japanese engine.

I define roadster as under two litres, fun, dependable, cheap to run, with low maintenance. The MX5 is all that and more. It was designed in the late eighties when Mazda was cash-rich, the aim, to build a “roadster fit for the nineties.”

The company didn’t skimp on anything. Nothing was overlooked, not even the hood. It had to be easy-to-use and leak-proof. Once sales took off other manufacturers suddenly discovered their sporting roots and produced a roadster or a sports car. None quite got it right, or as good value for money. So, how does the original model compare with the new? Have things improved or regressed?

The turbo/supercharger

The 1.8-litre turbo has contemporary flush headlights and beefed-up haunches, the oval mouth replaced by a cheeky smile. The 1.6 supercharged-roadster has the cute pop-up headlights known as wind-brakes, and svelte lines. The supercharger comes with a year’s warranty, the turbo with a factory warranty and a warm fuzzy feeling of establishment security. The turbo generates 178bhp at 6,000 rpm, and 166 lb-ft of torque at 4,500 rpm. The supercharger boosts the 1.6 (there’s a 1.8 version too) from 128 horsepower to 160, and there’s torque from the bottom end right up to 90mph, at which point that Subaru sails by.

Driving

In the new, stomp hard on the pedal and there’s no turbo lag. The supercharger has an ingenious petrol-saving cut-off once you level your speed, the turbo keeps going on command. There’s the same wrist-flicking gear change, but now it’s six-speed. I’ve never understood why other brands didn’t take the gearbox apart and copy its superb action.

Koni adjustable shocks lower the car, with 16-inch Panasport wheels - American copies of Minilites. The Mazdaspeed comes with 17-inch Racing Hart wheels. They are fitted with Toyo 205/40 W-rated tyres.

The disc brakes are effective and progressive. Stock brakes are almost adequate for the task, as are the original car’s speakers, but the new car has a superior 225-watt Bose system with the dividend of an automatic volume sensing adjustment. A spare tyre crowds the boot, but is recessed in the new car.

The original car is lighter - fewer layers of paint, no crash bars, abs, or air bags. The new car weighs in at 40Kg heavier than the stock version yet is just as quick, a claimed 6.6 to 60.

And the new interior uses good quality materials. My nasty plastics were junked to be redesigned in leather with alloy highlights. A pull-lever opens my boot while the turbo luxuriates in a key ring button for automatic locking/unlocking everything.

Minus points

There are a few disappointments. Those light five-spoke alloys give the wheels an empty, insubstantial appearance. And I’m still trying to work out why my six-feet height didn’t quite fit in the new version. The turbo has a horrible in-your-face array of BMW-red illuminated dials and switches. On motorways, the tyres are noisy. And, like my own car, the lowered suspension causes it to tramline on certain surfaces, a sure sign a car has been fettled a percentage too far. Other than that, the MazdaSpeed is still a great drive.

Summary

How Mazda will follow this simple, unpretentious car will certainly be a challenge. It needs to be bigger inside, and to have a choice of engines from its introduction. Meanwhile, Mazda has given us a great swan-song - and an entire industry of roadsters.

© Gareth Wardell 2004
Los Angeles

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