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New (to me) MX5 owner alert!
I spent most of last year hooning about in my first fun/fast car, a 205 GTi. I had been wanting a full fat GTi since I first had a 205, an XS, when I was around 18. The GTi was fantastic and it lived up to all of my expectations when I finally got it. It was a 1.6, Alpine White, pepper pot alloys, sunroof. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
It was pretty quick (relatively), had a communicative chassis, was pretty usable with 4 seats and large boot and most of all, great fun. I had bought it in the April and used it all of last summer, with some long distance road trips thrown in.
However, by September I was starting to get the nagging feeling that I wanted a change. The 205 had started to cost me a bit of money getting little things repaired/replaced and it was displaying some typically French reliability niggles that were a pain to resolve, with new ones forever cropping up.
Living in London also meant that a lot of the time I wanted to drive it, I ended up having to wrestle with it's quirks for a good 40 minutes driving through the city before i could open it up on some decent country roads. I realised that I was chasing that 5% of the time when the road, the car and myself were all in the right mood, when things were perfect, and spending 95% of the time getting annoyed at it's bad habits and being frustrated with driving it through town.
I put a speculative ad up on eBay in November to see what would happen and at the end of the weekend it had sold for a small profit to a nice bloke from the Isle Of Wight. Done.
With the money from the sale of the 205 safely tucked away, and in no rush to replace it, I started to do my research on what to get next. There were lots of options but the main criteria was fun. It had to be more fun, more of the time.
I had a few options in mind - E30 BMW's, Original Mini, VW Corrado, Cheap Kit Car - but in the end I settled on the MX5. It turned out to be a bit of a no brainer. It had a RWD chassis, Japanese reliability, was a convertible and they were generally quite cheap, especially at this time of year. I set my sights on early MK1's and started my research on all the little issues I should be looking out for - Rotten sills, torn hoods, Noisy HLA's etc.
eBay, Pistonheads and Gumtree became my hunting ground and I spent a few weekends looking at some good and some not so good examples. (One Green MK1 I looked at was so bad I was tempted to shop him to trading standards. The side of the car he hadn't bothered to photograph had a tear in the door skin about 10 inches long. He conveniently failed to mention that before i made the 2 hour round trip
)
Then one Sunday afternoon on eBay a few weeks ago I stumbled across this:
It was a 1990 MK1 in classic red, 104,000 miles, stamped book up to about 90k, hardtop thrown in, and very clean compared to everything else I had seen. It was a little outside my budget but a phone call to discuss the basics and a train ride later and I was standing in front of it. It was in great condition and had obviously been loved. It had been owned by the sellers son for the past 8 years and had only done around 6k a year with no expense spared on maintenance. Sills were immaculate, hood was recently replaced, good tyres all round, started on the button, drove perfectly, paint wasn't faded. I was powerless to resist.
A bit of rubbish haggling on my part, some sucking of teeth, umm-ing and ahh-ing, some last minute second thoughts, a handshake, and it was all mine.
That was about three weeks ago and you know what? It's bloody fantastic.
I had heard all the glowing reviews and wasn't sure how reality would stack up but it has been the most fun I have had in a car since first passing my test. It's absolutely brilliant.
I know i'm preaching to the converted by saying this here, but the MX5 has taken my criteria for fun and completely blown it away. Every drive feels like a special occasion. I know we aren't even in summer yet but being able to pop the roof down and go for a night time blast on some favourite roads has been a revelation.
I've treated it to a full service and have a few little things I want to sort out - currently trying to decide on whether to get a decat for a little bit of extra burble, or go the whole hog on an MX5parts exhaust - but otherwise it's staying as it is. The hardtop could do with a lick of paint but the quotes I've had have been expensive and as it's only really on when it's parked up in London, and comes off on the weekend, i'm not really that fussed.
I had today off work and was so happy to be able to whip the roof off, take the M11 out towards Ongar and spend the afternoon hooning about some favourite B-Roads. I'm smitten and can't wait for the summer. Bravo Mazda.
PS. Apologies for length of post. Hope I didn't bore anyone to death!
I spent most of last year hooning about in my first fun/fast car, a 205 GTi. I had been wanting a full fat GTi since I first had a 205, an XS, when I was around 18. The GTi was fantastic and it lived up to all of my expectations when I finally got it. It was a 1.6, Alpine White, pepper pot alloys, sunroof. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
It was pretty quick (relatively), had a communicative chassis, was pretty usable with 4 seats and large boot and most of all, great fun. I had bought it in the April and used it all of last summer, with some long distance road trips thrown in.
However, by September I was starting to get the nagging feeling that I wanted a change. The 205 had started to cost me a bit of money getting little things repaired/replaced and it was displaying some typically French reliability niggles that were a pain to resolve, with new ones forever cropping up.
Living in London also meant that a lot of the time I wanted to drive it, I ended up having to wrestle with it's quirks for a good 40 minutes driving through the city before i could open it up on some decent country roads. I realised that I was chasing that 5% of the time when the road, the car and myself were all in the right mood, when things were perfect, and spending 95% of the time getting annoyed at it's bad habits and being frustrated with driving it through town.
I put a speculative ad up on eBay in November to see what would happen and at the end of the weekend it had sold for a small profit to a nice bloke from the Isle Of Wight. Done.
With the money from the sale of the 205 safely tucked away, and in no rush to replace it, I started to do my research on what to get next. There were lots of options but the main criteria was fun. It had to be more fun, more of the time.
I had a few options in mind - E30 BMW's, Original Mini, VW Corrado, Cheap Kit Car - but in the end I settled on the MX5. It turned out to be a bit of a no brainer. It had a RWD chassis, Japanese reliability, was a convertible and they were generally quite cheap, especially at this time of year. I set my sights on early MK1's and started my research on all the little issues I should be looking out for - Rotten sills, torn hoods, Noisy HLA's etc.
eBay, Pistonheads and Gumtree became my hunting ground and I spent a few weekends looking at some good and some not so good examples. (One Green MK1 I looked at was so bad I was tempted to shop him to trading standards. The side of the car he hadn't bothered to photograph had a tear in the door skin about 10 inches long. He conveniently failed to mention that before i made the 2 hour round trip
)Then one Sunday afternoon on eBay a few weeks ago I stumbled across this:
It was a 1990 MK1 in classic red, 104,000 miles, stamped book up to about 90k, hardtop thrown in, and very clean compared to everything else I had seen. It was a little outside my budget but a phone call to discuss the basics and a train ride later and I was standing in front of it. It was in great condition and had obviously been loved. It had been owned by the sellers son for the past 8 years and had only done around 6k a year with no expense spared on maintenance. Sills were immaculate, hood was recently replaced, good tyres all round, started on the button, drove perfectly, paint wasn't faded. I was powerless to resist.
A bit of rubbish haggling on my part, some sucking of teeth, umm-ing and ahh-ing, some last minute second thoughts, a handshake, and it was all mine.
That was about three weeks ago and you know what? It's bloody fantastic.
I had heard all the glowing reviews and wasn't sure how reality would stack up but it has been the most fun I have had in a car since first passing my test. It's absolutely brilliant.
I know i'm preaching to the converted by saying this here, but the MX5 has taken my criteria for fun and completely blown it away. Every drive feels like a special occasion. I know we aren't even in summer yet but being able to pop the roof down and go for a night time blast on some favourite roads has been a revelation.
I've treated it to a full service and have a few little things I want to sort out - currently trying to decide on whether to get a decat for a little bit of extra burble, or go the whole hog on an MX5parts exhaust - but otherwise it's staying as it is. The hardtop could do with a lick of paint but the quotes I've had have been expensive and as it's only really on when it's parked up in London, and comes off on the weekend, i'm not really that fussed.
I had today off work and was so happy to be able to whip the roof off, take the M11 out towards Ongar and spend the afternoon hooning about some favourite B-Roads. I'm smitten and can't wait for the summer. Bravo Mazda.
PS. Apologies for length of post. Hope I didn't bore anyone to death!
There's no way you could bore a bunch of MX-5 lovers by writing about MX-5's mate. I know exactly what you mean by the fun revelation. Had mine since 11th of February and I am in love. Like you said, every drive just feels special, The steering feedback is telepathically good and that moment when you first put the roof down and all you can hear is yourself thinking "yesss!"
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