Mazda Miata MX5 NC

 

Although Mazda has changed everything on the new MX-5, the idea is the car makes you feel magically happy in just the same way it always did. A good, pretty little roadster is one
of the great, simple, unchanging pleasures of life, like a Sunday roast or walking on the cliffs at sunset.

In the middle of a car industry that can’t bear to stop fiddling, you’ve got to give a warm nod to the MX-5 team for its admirable focus. It didn’t try to take the MX-5 into new and strange engineering lands. No turbocharger, no folding hard top (not even a powered roof), no four-wheel drive or high-tech gubbins. The idea was just to modernise it where needed. And, of course, make it look slightly different so people will notice and buy another. Sports car sales always fall away after a few years, and the MX-5 isn’t immune – even though it’s now officially the biggest selling roadster in history, at three-quarters of a million. And the vast majority of those are still on the road, a reminder that one of the most important simple pleasures of having an MX-5 is that it runs like a Swiss watch. 

Snuggling down into the cockpit is easier than before. The seats are still simple little buckets, and the high centre tunnel still helps hug you securely when the cornering gets frenzied, but there’s more room now: slightly more cockpit length and a deep breath’s more width too, which is most welcome – well, it was just like sitting in the bath before. Your legs and arms are set straight ahead, the gearlever is just an arm’s flick from the steering wheel. It’s all perfectly laid out, and you are poised for action.

The engine fires to a deeper note now, a four-pot sports car note as straightforwardly evocative as a tight guitar-bass-drums pub band. It revs, cleanly as you like, to and beyond the 6,700rpm redline, flowering to 160bhp when you give it the full beans. It’s not a torquey engine, but delivery is predictable – no untoward troughs or spurts – and flicking around the gearbox keeps it on the boil. Besides, that power is enough for just 1,120kg. However, there was, on the test car, a little softness to the response. I wanted the throttle to be sharp enough to cut the national debt, but instead there was a mild lack of enthusiasm. I’ll be generous and put it down to the car’s newness.

Demolishing that speed is all part of the fun. This car fits you like a well-worn trainer, all its controls matched in effort and travel, so it’s a snap to flick down through the gears, heel-and-toeing while you tip deep into the braking force. The middle pedal is short and snappy, but not so aggressive it’ll bite your leg, and the ABS arrives with real finesse. The six-speed gearbox is standard on the top-spec version and comes from the RX-8. By almost any standard it snaps about the gate with ultra-short exactness. But not by one standard: the original five-speed is even better, and it’s still available. Six cogs is really overdoing it on a car that rarely goes beyond 100mph.

The MX-5 is supposed to be your extrovert little mate and, boy, does it get into character when you roll your wrists on the steering wheel. It darts into bends, can’t get enough of them, sniffs them out, tugs at your sleeve and pulls you into the game. This is fun when you’re trickling through the suburbs, but here’s a funny thing, when you start to load it into proper corners, doubts surface. While it’s as eager as ever, it feels like it’s holding something back from you, like it’s over-tyred and can’t quite communicate. The old one, on its biggest tyre option, was the same. Has Mr Sheen been along and swept away some of the original MX-5’s fairy dust? Well, gird your loins, push it a bit harder, and find out.