Performance Link MX-5 (ND) for sale
Remember that MX-5 Ben said he would never sell?
One of the lovely things about MX-5s is that you don’t necessarily get what all the fuss is about till you’ve owned one. From a distance, Mazda’s long-running sports car can appear too small and too modestly powered for its own good. Even a brief test drive will not tell you all you need to know. This is a car that you need to let get under your skin; through repeated use under a setting sun, yes, but also by availing yourself of the many, many tuning options offered to owners by British firms.
Performance Link is one such specialist. It can and will do many things to your MX-5, from the light chassis dusting that is a £225 Road Spec Alignment, to a full-blown turbocharged K24 engine swap if you’re prepared to stump up more than £15k. Our own Ben Lowden took advantage of the more affordable offering not long after he bought his ND and upgraded the springs and anti-roll bars - and was sufficiently delighted with the result to return to the Gloucestershire-based garage for other things, too.
Most notably, he had the ECU remapped to access more power at 7,300rpm. This, combined with a SPS manifold and Cobra exhaust - not to mention the 17-inch Konig Hypergram alloys and Michelin PS5 tyres he snuck on there when we weren’t looking - elicited from him the kind of facial expressions that are usually reserved for the bedroom. He was not indulging in hyperbole when he previously wrote that the MX-5 was the best car he’d ever owned - he really meant it. He told the rest of us repeatedly.
Given that he also did a very Ben job of improving on the interior - his car sports the optional Alcantara you really want, as well as a steering wheel made consciously better by the stuff - you might wonder why he has suddenly decided to sell GY65 GMO. Here, after all, is a man who has drunk deeply of the MX-5 Kool-Aid and declared himself so satisfied that he went to the trouble of 3M-ing a Fyralip boot spoiler to help set off the optional splitters and sill extensions. Even his kids declared their love for the red Labrador that lived in the garage.
Well, when he speaks in the advert of making way for a dream car, he is not understating the situation. We will not steal his future thunder by revealing what that might be - though if you’re aware of Ben’s predilections, you could have a good guess - but suffice it to say, he has a good reason for retrieving the money invested in the Mazda. Even if doing so pains him in a way not usually observable in a man who changes cars like they were vintage t-shirts.
At any rate, his loss is everyone else’s gain, because whichever way you cut it, GY65 GMO is a very handsome example of a lightly modded ND - not least because it has only covered 8k in over ten years. And while there are faster examples of similar projects currently available on PH (this BBR’d NC in the final stages of auctioning would smoke Ben’s car courtesy of the attached Stage 2 turbo), it is hard to ignore such light use, or the love ladled on top. Put it this way: if you don’t buy it, one of us might genuinely be forced to…
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