Track nights, drifting and lots of screenwash: 2000 miles in an MX-5

Back in 2023, Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro said: “We love the MX-5 and the world loves the MX-5. We are determined in the age of electrification to keep the joy of driving which the MX-5 represents alive.”

‘Represents’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Mazda’s next sports car will not be awfully like an MX-5 to me. And it will most likely not wear the MX-5 badge.

Anyway, enough semantics. The reason I have this MX-5 is to see if I can conceivably run one through winter as my only car. 

The hardier among you might consider me to be a soft southerner after reading that sentence. But a few colleagues (admittedly soft southerners themselves) have told me they wouldn’t fancy running something so small, impractical and rear-wheel drive during the winter months.

What do I have planned? On these pages, you will read tales of track driving at night, a few comparison tests with pretty abstract rivals and, importantly, the rather less glamorous nitty-gritty of daily use.

Initial thoughts? I’m not a fan of the optional matt grey paint. When Audi started doing matte paint way back in 2013, it was clever in a kind of ironic way. “Look at me, spending all this money to make it look like I’ve got primer.” But since then the concept has grown tired.

Winter is doing the car a huge favour so far. It ’s constantly caked in mud, which hides the paint well. I love filthy cars and will fill these pages in the coming months with the dirtiest MX-5 you may ever see.

Other notes? This car is small. Really small. Shorter than the Mk1 MX-5 even. The first few times I parallel-parked it on my street, I actually had to try again, such was my brain’s inability to measure quite how petite it was. 

The boot is pretty deep and useful for a car of this size, but the interior space is virtually non-existent. I recently took it to see my parents and my wife had to stash a lot of our cargo (presents, bags etc) in the front with her. I think she took it remarkably well.

So far I’ve been on only a few other trips in the MX-5, most of them on the motorway. And I’ve been truly dumbfounded by how at home it has felt there. An easy 40-plus MPG in the fast lane for one thing. Sixth gear is pretty long and it ’s only really pulling around 3000rpm. This is especially important to me, as my last long-termer, an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, averaged 23.5mpg.

It’s the comfort that has surprised me most, though. It really is a pleasant place to be. When you read Bilstein dampers on the spec sheet, you think lowered and racy. But there’s a proper amount of squidge I wasn’t expecting, especially on such thin rubber. It’s not a quiet car at speed, mind you. With the Bose stereo cranked up to a volume where you can actually hear it, your passenger is fully drowned out.

Is this the culmination of 36 years of MX-5 production? If it comes anywhere close, I’m in for a treat – even during the depths of winter.

Update 2

I was invited along by Mazda to the world’s first ‘night-time track day’ in Anglesey. Yep, North Wales, in the winter. At night.  

The drop-top Mazda was perfect for the task; I couldn’t think of anything better to do it in. It waltzed me effortlessly from London to Wales in comfort and with surprisingly good 40mpg-plus fuel economy. 

And then on track it was an absolute peach, flattering my driving and generally just being extremely good fun, communicative and everything you’d want in a track-day car that you also intend to drive home.

Read the full feature here

Update 3

Before I knew it, another invite arrived. This time it was from the electro-modders at Electrogenic, wanting to know if I’d like to drive their new battery-powered Electrogenic Mk1 MX-5.

Yes, please. And it was great: proper fun, with big, laugh-inducing skids, and all wrapped up in the unmistakable first-gen shell. 

Read the full feature here

Update 4

In the office I tend to sit next to our staff writer Charlie Martin and behind Classic & Sports Car’s associate editor, Lizzie Pope. 

Since getting my long-term MX-5 they have both bought NDs. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I should be on commission. 

In this line of work we’re blessed with driving some of the best cars around. This section of the mag is full of interesting metal week in, week out – and the MX-5 is no exception. 

I’ve had a great selection of long-termers in this job. But the MX-5’s mixture of low-speed fun and dependable reliability has made it my favourite. It’s a car that makes the everyday more enjoyable. 

Some things about my MX-5 I loved immediately. The seating position and the weighting of the manual gearbox and pedals, for me, are the best in the business.

There were other aspects that I grew to love. I thought the steering was a touch light at first, but after a few weeks, and with the benefit of driving a couple of palate cleanser regular cars in between, I realised that light doesn’t have to mean uncommunicative. It just means easy. 

Cons are harder to find. I’m not nitpicking here when I write that the infotainment short-circuits my millennial brain: it doesn’t allow me to use the touchscreen while the car is moving (there’s a rotary controller for that). 

By the time the neurons in my brain (eventually) engage and the neurotransmitters trigger thoughts about not touching the screen, my greasy little digits are already prodding away. I have been conditioned by 20 years of touchscreen phones, and I suspect many others have. 

Admittedly I probably am nitpicking, though, when I complain that the windscreen washer bottle is a touch small at 1.2 litres. Not ideal for hacking around in winter. 

Finally, we’ll get round to the question we posed at the start: how easy is it to run a convertible as your only car in the depths of a British winter? Easy. For me. And I’d go as far as saying it would be easy for most childless readers who don’t regularly need to transport anything particularly large. 

Bonus question: is this the spec to go for? At the office, we regularly talk specs. And, as you might imagine, we often disagree. A few of us think all electric cars should basically be the least powerful spec possible; others say we’re missing out on all the huge torque. Some of us insist there’s still room for diesel; others remind us that modern petrol hybrids can offer basically the same economy.