Is the MX-5 RF a good looking car? PH Blog

Dan + MX-5 should be a match made in heaven... but what about the RF?

I've just spent some very enjoyable miles tooling about Devon in the MX-5 RF. Turns out the roads round here are (at this time of year at least) quiet and lots of fun in a car with a zingy naturally aspirated engine, lovely manual gearbox and skinny tyres to put its modest power to the occasionally slithery roads. Even with the roof folded away it's nice and toasty in the little Mazda's cabin, meaning winter driving with the wind in your bobble hat is entirely practical and fun.

Ummm, ahhh... it's a tricky one!

Yes, Trent loves driving MX-5 shocker.

But I still can't call whether the RF is a good looking car or not. I've walked around it many times in the last couple of days. Squinted at it from every angle and viewpoint. Even followed one of my fellow journos along a country lane for a good few miles to get a sense of how it looks under way - the best way in my book to actually judge whether a car's design 'works'.

One second I'll look at it and think 'yeah!', the buttresses giving the rear quarter a muscularity missing in the more delicate looking roadster and the coupe shape really bringing something new to the MX-5 line-up. Then I'll see it from another and the 5mm increase in roof height mentioned in the presentation looks more like 5cm, there seems way too much metal between the wheelarches and the top of the body and it looks like a car that needs stretching out to really work aesthetically.

This isn't going away for a while...

Design is such a delicate thing too. We may scoff when we hear of 10mm added here, 5mm shaved off there but these degrees of detail are visible, even to the untrained eye. Check out the new Panamera for instance - a 20mm drop in the rear roof height and 30mm more in the wheelbase (together with some much more confident detailing) has transformed the four-door Porsche format from ugly duckling into something genuinely stylish.

I'd like to see an RF with a little drop in ride height - standard MX-5s always seem to be up on stilts and this mod alone gives the roadster a real sense of purpose, likewise a nice set of wheels. Until someone like BBR makes a modded version of the RF the head scratching will have to continue though.

What do you reckon?

Dan