The Mazda Miata

Where did the Mazda Miata come from? What inspired Mazda to build this roadster, and what makes it different from roadsters of the past? Tune in to find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hi, and welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott Benjamin and I'm Ben Bolin,
and we'll get a topic today that as a listener suggestion.
And um, man, you know what, first, I better, I

(00:22):
guess I've better read out some of the cautions that
that this listener wanted us to read. Um. His name
is Mark Bandoni and he's some cool Adjarazona wanted a
show about the mas of me. Adam very good idea.
I think it's a topic that's long overdue on the show.
And Um, basically from from what this note says here,
he wants me to tell the listeners that one of

(00:44):
the girly cars they're slow, probably Osama bin Laden's carved choice.
I think Hitler drove one to Um. The car is
actually it lowers your testosterone level when you drive it.
It's just a terrible, terrible automobile. It's really no one
should buy one. That's the that's the the the the
thrust of this letter here. Yeah, because Hitler was really

(01:04):
big into Miatas in the nineties. Yeah, Yeah, especially the
Gen one and Gen two cars. Just stay away. They're
just not even worth it. Mark. Mark wants to make
sure that no one ever buys one ever again. Where
you go with this? Okay, the real story and this
is that the the title of this email is Mazda
Miata disinformation campaign. He wants us to tell everybody that

(01:25):
so that he can gather up all the parts because
he absolutely loves his Mazda Miata and parts are becoming
difficult to find. Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah, So he says, uh,
you know, honestly, he's he's well here, you know, I'll
just read the email about that, all right. So Mark says,
first off, I'd like to say I love your podcast.
Listen to him at work. Help a twelve hour day,

(01:46):
go buy nice and fast. That's a long day, all right.
So he I currently owns a uh Gen one edition
I guess, and his his wife owns a m edition.
His sister also owns in ninety three, and he talked
one of his cousins into picking up at one not
long ago. So you know, this is a guy that

(02:07):
knows this stuff with me atus right, uh says when
he first started getting into menatas, they were pretty there's
pretty negative stigma with them and some of that stuff
that I mentioned, not all of it, of course, It's
just that a lot of people thought they were kind
of like, um, I'll just say it there. They were
a chick car. You know. People thought they were girly cars.
They were the car of a hairdresser, as he puts it, Uh,
something that not a lot of manly men would want

(02:27):
to drive, right, Yeah, people that people sort of saw
them as a bit of feminine exactly. And uh, but
he's noticed that, you know, the stigma has started to
kind of wear off as more and more people start
to discover what as he says, it's awesome and capable
these little cars are. And I completely completely agree with
this email. And I've noticed and I've watched that stigma
drop from these cars. Um in the past. I mean

(02:50):
I've seen like what it was and the way they
were portraying, uh, you know, in I guess pop culture,
I suppose. And then now now we're seeing on the
racetrack what we're seeing the streets. Uh, they're a fantastic
little package. Really, I mean they're they're really really nice cars.
But like he said, the older versions and some of
the parts are becoming harder and harder to find because
people do have this interest in them. Um, So I

(03:13):
guess you know, he's excited about them because it's kind
of like the resurgence of the British roadster. You know,
they were they were like kind of a type of
vehicle that had gone away over so long and then
finally came back. I mean the last time we saw
something very similar to it. And I mean, I'm sure
there are other examples, but like the MG Midget Um
and that that type of vehicle and some of the
the Alpha Male Spiders and you know the cars like

(03:34):
that that were the two seat roadsters that were lightweight, small,
somewhat practical. I mean, you know, they got decent mileage,
not a whole lot of cargo area or anything like that,
but um, you know, they were a great car to
drive around and they were fun to drive. And um,
he just wants to mention, you know, like the Spec
series that they've got now you know that you can
build your own Masda Miata Spec car. Um. One of

(03:56):
the things that he mentions here is that there's a
hard tip requirement for the series and because of that,
hard tops are becoming extremely difficult to find. In fact,
sometimes a hard top will be as much as a
used me out of car, the entire car, I know.
And he sent some photos of his car, which he calls, uh,
he calls the Little Bandit. He's named his car the
Little Bandit, and um, it's actually really cool looking white

(04:19):
me out. It's again it's he's swapped out a one
point six Leader motor for a more powerful one point
eight Leader motor. And of course there's a limited slip
differential on a turbo charge that he's added. He's got
about two hundred horse power in this car that weighs
about pounds. Um, it's had two hundred and seventy thousand
miles on it, and it looks fantastic. I mean, some

(04:39):
great photos that he sent and um, really and basically
he wanted us to talk about master miatas for the day.
So I think that's what we'll do today. This is
a an excellent email, really, I mean it was funny too,
and you know the stuff that we let off with.
He said, just get creative with it. So that's what
we're doing. But um, maybe saying it was Hitler's cars
a little bit too much, well, you know, the the

(05:00):
history might not quite be on our side there, But
there is quite a lot of stuff that we could
say about the Mazda Miata. First off, you guys are
both right about the early I guess pop culture conceptions
of the Mianta. To me, that's strange because when you
look at why the Miata came about, uh, it's it's

(05:22):
fairly obvious that Mazda perceived a hole in the market
when they started with them, the m X five Mianda.
They had let's see, Triumph had gave up um with
MGB uh intire right right right right, the um the

(05:46):
last Fiat Spider was just sold to someone eight five
as a get this Pininfarina Azura disease two rs. Uh
So really at this time, and this is according to Edmonds,
uh the only four cylinder front engine classic two seat
roadster that you could get in the US was the

(06:06):
Alpha Romeo Spider. Yeah, I guess, I mean, okay, at
the time, I know, I know what you're saying. There
were a bunch of them along the way. You mentioned
the Triumph Spitfire, you mentioned the MG mg B from
MG of course, the Fiat the Alpha Mayo. There was
also a car called the Lotus a lan that I
think some people like to forget along the way it's
it was. It was not a bad looking car. It
wasn't great. It wasn't anything like the current Lotus car

(06:28):
as we see today. But it was a pretty cool
little car. So just there there was a hole in
the market, like you said, and and Massa decided that
they're going to do something to to bring this back.
And that was around well, it was in the late eighties.
That's when they started planning. Yeah, they planned in the
late eighties and around nineteen eighty nine, Uh, they actually
came to market. Was something that was the first generations

(06:49):
in THEATA and it was sold as at nine model
year car. So you know, in nineteen nine you could
buy a nine nine model Year. And um, I think
that some of the this, uh this idea that it
wasn't really a wrong car. It wasn't really something that
a lot of you know, like track track loving individuals
would would like it for, you know, like for a
track day car. I mean, um, it just wasn't all

(07:09):
that powerful. Yeah, before we go on, though, I'm started
getting a little lot of order here, man, But I've
got a I've got a little anecdote, Uh, a bit
of a legend or a rumor about the founding or
the or the inspiration for the Mayada ready to hear it.
So in nineteen seventy nine, according to the story, a
journalist named Bob Hall was working for Automotive News and

(07:33):
Mazda's managing director asked Bob Hey, what type of cars
should Masda be building? And Hall said a small, open
two seater. And so this might not have led directly
to Miata, but here's what did happen. Bob Hall went
to work for Mazda two years later in California and

(07:54):
he headed up the Miyata development team. Very interesting, so
he did have he had a had a lot more
into this and then people really know. Yeah, so it's now,
of course people will say, you know, we can't put
this all on Mr Hall. We can't say that he
was the one man responsible for the Miata, but uh,
he is quite possible that he had a huge hand

(08:17):
in the success. Because what most is aiming for with
the Miata in this in this early period is an
affordable sports car, and I think with the emphasis on affordable,
I think that is where we see some of the
early complaints about power. I mean it wasn't it wasn't
the most powerful. No, but they hit the nail right
on the head with the design of this thing. I mean,

(08:37):
people were excited about this car. I remember I was
in Okay, I'm I'm an old guy. I was in
high school. I was in high school at this time.
I graduated in eighty nine, So in high school, you
can imagine kind of the the excitement around this car
when it was about ready to come out because I'm
reading all the auto magazines at the time, you know,
that's what I did, and um, you know, so I
was always excited about picking up the newest edition on

(08:58):
the on the shelf there because you didn't go online
to get your information, and uh, I know it's so old,
so um, you know, you would be excited about seeing
the photos of you know, the the uh I guess,
the concept sketches and everything all along the way. And
then of course you know that it started showing up
at the it was at the auto show, Like, how
that looks like a nice car. I hope to stick
with that design, and they did stuck with the design,

(09:18):
and I'm sure there were some other renditions that you know,
didn't quite make it. So this thing debuted in at
the Chicago Auto Show, UM, and of course people just
went crazy for it. They thought this was a great idea.
You know, let's say it's a lightweight to seat roadster,
front engine rear wheel drive, which is it's critical, I
guess for you know, the small sports car to have
rear wheel drive. You know, we've we've talked about minis

(09:40):
and things like that that have front wheel drive, and
those are fun to drive as well, but for a
an open two seat roadster design like this that's trying
to get that throwback feel of the old British roasters,
this is definitely something they needed the real world drive layout,
and it was something that you know, no one was
doing at the time. Let's also emphasize, just take a
second here to emphasize how tiny the Mazda Miata is.

(10:02):
I mean, we're talking about um an eighty nine point
two inch wheelbase. Uh, it's about a hundred and fifty
five point two inches overall, So at this time, it's
sixteen inches shorter than Mazda's smallest sedan of the year
of that year. So it's like thirteen ft long or
something like that. It's A. It's a real it's a
twelve feet long. I don't know what it is. I

(10:23):
can't do the the off the top man exactly, but
it sounds like, you know, this is something that it's
like the shot in the arm that that Mazda needed
at the time. Right. And I want to talk about
the weight because you mentioned that we should really emphasize that, Scott.
Uh when it comes out, it's just a little bit
over two thousand one pounds. Yeah, it was. It was

(10:45):
actually a really lightweight package. Now it was. It came
with um at one point six or one point eight
leader engine and that's uh, this is for the Gen
one uh Miata, which they call the n A, and
then of course Gen two is n B and then
Gen three is n c H. So you here it
referred to as you know, the current miatas is NC
sometimes that's all that means really. Um So Gen one again,

(11:06):
it was two thousand and seventy pounds, so that's about
nine and um it progressively gained weight as it went
up in in in stages. Now we know why that happens.
We've talked about this so many times, all the all
the mandatory things that are every mandated bit of safety,
um structure that has to go into this thing, whether

(11:26):
it's you know, air bags or if it's you know,
improving these the side impact you know that the bars
in the door, um all that type of stuff. It
adds weight, adds weight every year. So UM, I don't
think I'm I'm letting anything up out here when I
say that. You know Gen two was you know, two
thousand three forty eight pounds, So that's a two hundred
and seventy eight pound increase in eight years because that

(11:48):
was And then then let's see Gen three, which is
two thousand five to current date. Um Man, the weight
goes way up. It's two thousand four or fifty to
two thousand five forty two pounds somewhere in there. That's
a range depending on what engine option you select. And
over the original weight. Ben this thing has gained four

(12:09):
hundred and seventy two pounds since the first generation. So
you get a Gen one, it's it's four hundred and
seventy two pounds lighter to begin with than a Gen three. Yeah,
and the the engine does get more powerful as we
go through this, But I would argue with the addition
of the weight I don't know how much figure. Can

(12:29):
I say one thing here, I'm I'm excited about this
and I really want to talk about it. I'm gonna
wait till the very end of this podcast. Okay, there's
there's some amazing stuff going on with this, and the
weight really doesn't it doesn't have much of a factor
when you talk about what we're going to talk about
at the end of this podcast. We're setting it up. Yeah,
there's there's some fantastic stuff happening out there, so I

(12:49):
promise we'll get to it. Yeah, but just just right now,
there's a for people to know. During the third generation
excuse me, uh, there was a two there's there is
a two point zero leader uh four cylinder, and then
for the second generation, I think we're at one point
eight leaders. So we've seen it increase. Ye, it was

(13:10):
I think the first and second it was one point
six or one point eight for for Gen one and
Gen two and the Gen three you've got an option
between a one point and a two point oh, so
you know it does go up. In the two leader engine,
it's pretty strong. It's an inline four engine. It's rated
differently for the manual and the automatic, not it's um
a hundred and sixty seven horsepower for the five speed,
and for the automatic it's a hundred and fifty eight

(13:33):
horse power, So you know the horse powers way up there.
It's still a strong car, these things that these things
are definitely pulling their weight on the road. And in
the beginning, to go back to Mazda's sold almost thirty
six thousand in that first year. Uh so you know
those aren't like Honda Civic or Honda Accord numbers. They

(13:54):
are they are they are pretty good. If Edmonds project
that if Masda could have made a hundred thousand of
these vehicles, then every one of them would have been
sold that year. So uh, I think that's true. And
you know what, I think a lot of people now
would really appreciate if they had made a hundred thousand
because um, you know, like uh, you know, like our
our listener who called in at their wrote in about this,

(14:17):
he wants to find all the parts he can. I've
got a neighbor who drives one of these that would
love to find some parts. He's got a Gen one
edition as well. I don't know how many miles that
thing's got on it's been in several accidents. Um. Yeah,
and it's held up. It's really held up. He's actually
put the work into it too, you know, to keep
it on the road. And it looks great. It's a
fantastic cards British Racing green, you know, the dark green

(14:38):
special edition not special edition. No, but um, I don't
think there's anything this guy is gonna do to get
rid of that car. He's gonna hang onto it forever,
it seems. Yeah, somebody's gonna inherit it, and I think so. Yeah.
So the reason I asked about the special edition, I
guess you mean just the color is the British racing Yes, yeah,
just because one of the first Miata special editions, which
we should probably pepper out pepper throughout this podcast, was

(15:01):
the um was the one that had a coat of
British Racing green, which goes back, of course of British
racing cars, right mass the only built four thousand of these. Uh.
They had tan, leather, upholstere um, wooden, shift nub, every
everything was just a little bit of a step up
because medically interior, you know what you're making me second

(15:23):
guess myself. I'm gonna have to walk over to his
house tonight right after this podcast. Yeah, I have to
walk over and just ask him if I can take
a look around and if it is one of these
special edition cars because it has a right color paint,
has a right color interior. I don't know if he
has a wooden shift knob and we looked for like
stainless steel sill plates. Interesting, Okay, I'll check this out because, uh,
I could see why he's hanging onto it. If that's

(15:43):
the case, I mean otherwise it's a great commuter car.
I see him in it all the time. He just
gets back and forth to work from it. The weekend car.
Kids drive it occasionally. It seems like a decent lets
his kids drive it. He does. He does high school kids,
college age kids and uh and they seem to have
a lot of fun in it. Well that's really cool, man,
that's uh there's okay, Well, I'm getting sidetracked because I'm

(16:04):
thinking about how cool it would be to drive one
of these. Uh. So we've talked about the weight, and
we've talked about how um, we've talked about how successful
this is. Mazda just decides to do UM and if
it ain't broke, don't fix it strategy, and they only
change a couple of things by adding them to the options.

(16:26):
Really they you can get a four speed automatic transmission,
that's one of the biggest ones. They add anti lock
breaks as an option. Uh. And as we said, the
uh the special Edition came out. Now, special editions are
kind of a long running uh Miata rather specialty, right. Yeah,

(16:47):
they've had quite a few all the way through uh
well through present day. As a matter of fact, there
have been so many of these different things. Um Man,
they've got super light editions, They've got Mad and Black
special editions. Um, just all kinds of all kinds of
add ons and and performance options. Maza Speed made one,
there's a Master Speed Edition. There's anniversary editions, because you know,

(17:08):
this thing is getting old. I mean, we've we've talked
about um you know from a right from the beginning
was generation through two thousand and five was Generation two.
So somewhere in there in generation two becomes a ten
year anniversary edition. Uh, there's been a a twenty year
anniversary edition within within this um the third year, third

(17:28):
generation rather so you know, it's it's uh, it's it's
a line that's been around for a long time highly successful.
They know that, you know, to sell these special edition cars,
you know, they just do a little bit of you know,
trickery with them, you know, like with the and I
don't mean tricking the consumers. I mean you know, they're
they're given it to their in house tuning division, like
you know, the Master Speed Division and saying why don't

(17:49):
you guys have fun with this one? And we're gonna
make four hundred of these cars, and we're gonna label them.
We're gonna we're gonna, you know, put a badge somewhere
in the car that says this is one of four
hundred and uh and we're gonna charge a little bit
more for it. But it's going to be exclusive. Yeah,
and it's it's tweaked, I think is a good word
for it, because we will see stuff like a new
or exclusive paints coat. Uh. They're big on the wooden

(18:14):
shift knobs. That's a big thing for the special editions. Yeah,
it's a lot of trim work and stuff like the
wooden wheel and stuff like that. It's some of its
throwback stuff, you know that they want to, uh to
emulate that look of the old roadsters. Again. I totally
understand that. You know one thing that that um they've
done really really exceptionally well along away then and I
we I think we need to point this out. Is

(18:35):
the soft top. Oh yeah, that's a good call. They've
got a hard top version, they've got a soft top version,
and the soft top, you know, I don't know if
you've ever wrestled with the soft top on a car before.
They are they can be different, can be extremely difficult.
The Mazda Miata version though, however, the soft top operation
is extremely easy. And uh and I don't know how

(18:56):
easy it was in the early days. I would think
that it's close to this because I've seen my neighbor
put his up and down occasionally. But the current edition,
the third generation soft top in you can open and
close this thing from the driver's seat in less than
five seconds. It's really amazing. I mean, it's that easy.
There's just one latch at the center location, right above

(19:17):
the rear view mirror. You push your release button, open
the latch and push it back with your right arm,
and right from the driver's seat you can fold it
right back in place and lock it in a position
down below you. And then the exact same motion to
reverse of the motion to bring it back up again.
And it can be done, you know, sitting sitting in
the stop, like you don't have to get out of
the car. You don't have to wrestle with anything. A
single latch, which is a huge benefit. I mean, I

(19:38):
guess in a small car, two latches wouldn't mind, wouldn't
matter really, Um, But I don't know if you've ever
really I've I've fought with Jeep Wrangler soft tops before
and in the early days, like you know, not early early,
but I mean like in the early nineties and terribly
difficult to put up and down. Oh, brother, tell me
about not to be not to be too only dramatic here,

(20:00):
but I feel like I've been personally betrayed by a
couple of soft tops. Uh. One was in a friend's car,
and it was it was kind of his car that
his father, his father bought it. We're in high school, right,
and he had he had bought this car clearly so
that he could drive it. And you know, it's his

(20:21):
son's car for high school or whatever. So I remained today, uh,
in infamy in a place called Eagles Landing, Georgia, because
I was the one who was blamed falsely listeners falsely
blamed for breaking a soft top that was I tell you, honestly, Scott,

(20:41):
it was already broken. I just it bothered. It bothered me,
to be fair. Some of these cars have much larger
soft top. Of course, there's more mechanism underneath the soft
top that has to be folded and you know, coaxed
in the right directions. Are Yeah, there's there's some swearing
involved that has to happen, and uh it does happen.

(21:02):
And I just found the Wrangler tops in the early
nineties to be extremely difficult. I know they're much easier
now they're not. They're not quite as simple though as
the maths to meatta top and you know, again there's
not much there. But I did have that. I had
that MG for a while and that was a relatively
easy top to to to operate. Um, it doesn't sound
quite as easy as this one because there were actually

(21:24):
pieces that you had to take a part just it
was a different system, but about the same amount of
top I suppose. Um, I don't know. It's just they've
made it so right in this case. And if you
haven't seen it operate, I mean you can go online
and watch people do this. It's so simple. It's kind
of one of those things that if that's one thing
that's kind of holding you back from buying one of these,
don't let it. I mean, it's it's that easy. They'll

(21:46):
make sure that you already have a harder soft top
uh available that works when you buy a Miata, if
you buy one, because as we mentioned earlier, the parts
can be a bear Scott. One stat that I want
to put in here for the third generation. One of
my favorite sets is always the zero to sixty. So
the Miata, the third gin Mada Miata gets a seven

(22:10):
point five seconds zero to sixty. That's not bad. That's
not bad. It's not flying. It's it's not flying because
the MASD the Speed Miata, which a variant from two
thousand four, was able to take its turbo charged one
point eight leader and get zero to sixty in a

(22:31):
little bit less mid mid six seconds. So to the
two leader standard version is a little bit slower than
the Masta Speed one point eight leader. M Y got it, Okay,
I understand, which makes sense? You understand? And uh, let's see,
I'm trying to think of the uh now, the way
we've already talked about right two seats. The cargo area
that's gotta be a down spot for some people, that

(22:53):
it's only got five That the current version is five
point three cubic feet of storage space, very very little
cargo area. The mileage is decent, not not fantastic, which
I don't know, I don't know how to think about this.
Um around twenty one City Highway. Um, not terrible, not fantastic.
I mean, you'd expect a little more from a lightweight car,
but it sounds like they're kind of going more for

(23:14):
for performance in this case yet, which I understand. UM.
And the m s r P on this thing, as
as um as you'll find is right around twenty seven
and a half thousand, so UM, a bit pricey if
you're just gonna buy something like this for a toy,
if you're gonna buy it for a commuter car, sounds
like it's not a bad idea, you know, it seems
decent for some people. I don't know if everybody's everybody's

(23:36):
you know, a cup of tea. Really, Because you can't
really have more than one person with you, you can't
carry a lot of things. It may leave you, uh,
you know, in some cases it may leave you kind
of stuck without the right vehicle for the right time,
you know, the right thing that you're doing. Sure, this
is not necessarily all purposed vehicle, but it's a I
think it's a great vehicle for what it is, especially

(23:58):
if you think again, going back to the word affordable
sports car, they nailed it. Yeah, fantastic second car is
what I would say. This is really and I think
it's I think it's a good choice for a weekend car,
sometimes commuter and a second car. Of course. Oh, I
meant to ask you something about the weekend. Actually, sure, Okay,
So I have a little bit of free time. I'll

(24:19):
just be working on some stuff for our new website,
car Stuff show dot com. And I realized that I
have some time to watch a couple of movies. But
it's been so long since I had some free time.
What what do you have any picks for me? Let
me tell you it's spent a long time since we've
recommended any films as well. And I'm excited about this
because we're back to kind of our Netflix movie club

(24:41):
and I have found a reasonable movie. Now. It's not
for everybody, Okay, Okay, I gotta I gotta point that out.
It's rated r UM. It's nineteen seventy seven. It's called
joy Ride, and this movie it's it's it's a drama.
It's starring Desi Arnez Jr. Robert Carradine, who is David
Carradine's half brother. I guess, um, you know, come from
Theater DVD and uh Ann Lockhart and Melanie Griffith who

(25:04):
was really young in this thing in seven again, so um,
I want to get this as watching the trailer, and
I think it was Casey Kayson who was narrating the
trailer because he used to do that movie thing, you
know before the guy with the uh the deep deep
voice for the exactly before that guy, Casey Kayson did
a lot of movie trailers, and so he's narrating this one.

(25:24):
But it's about a group of really board teenagers who
leave the Los Angeles area for an Alaskan adventure and uh,
you know, they're headed up the up to work on
the Alaska Pipeline and because you know, they find out
that it's really difficult and dangerous labor and the money
isn't all that great, so they started to look for
as they say, other thrills um in the in the

(25:44):
Alaskan wilderness. And they so they embark on this life
of crime then and um, now they got the law
that's you know, always close behind them there in hot pursuit. Um.
You know the you know, the the tagline I think
is they went north to get rich and to be free. Um,
but you know, they end up in this life of
crime thing and it becomes almost like a like a
lot of people said, almost like a Bonnying Clyde type story,

(26:08):
free Robbin places. But it's but it's more than just
one couple. It's like a couple of couples in this thing.
So it kind of interesting. Now, Now why I would
pick this is because, you know, I mentioned that the
law is always really on them. And there's a lot
of cars in this movie that are fantastic cars. There's
some some old cars of course, you know, pre pre
nineteen seven. There's a seventy three Plymouth road Runner, a

(26:31):
fifty seven Pontiac super Chief, a sixty two four Galaxy
five hundred, a lot of mid nineteen sixties and palas
and get this bend one of them drives in nineteen
sixty two Pontiac ambulance. It looks like one of those
sixty two ambulance that you know, those look like those
giant old sixty two hearse cars, right, yeah, amazing cars.
And and there's a lot of screen time for that one,

(26:52):
so it's in in this thing quite a bit. Um Anyways,
it's just a it has this like real bondying Clyde
feel and and it's just about you know, kids trying
to get away from the big city and and do
something on their own. But this, uh, this crime aspect
comes in. It's it's a fascinating story, all right, And
now let's go back because we have to travel back
to two thousand and eight. Scott, I'm really excited to

(27:14):
talk about some of the current developments in Masda and
I know in masdamot Is and I knew you are too.
But first we should probably talk about the big two
thousand eight facelift, right, Yeah, sure we can do that.
There was there was some significant changes that that came
around in two thousand eight, and you know that's that's
just after after the third generation was launched, about three
years after. Yeah, that's kind of strange because three years after,

(27:36):
you know, they said you know, here's the n C
and it's all new. Uh, here's our our latest. And
by the way, m X five is what they call
this thing throughout so and even even the Gen one
versions of the m X five Gen two is m
X five. We just hear m X five now a
lot in the marketing and stuff, you know, from Masda.
So that's a little bit of confusion. Earlier, you know
that you may may pick up along the way. Um.

(27:57):
But again, three years after they released the n C,
which is the third generation, they gave it this this
big facelift so that they restyled the the whole front
end to kind of closely match what Mazda is currently doing.
A lot of automakers do that. They try to give
it styling cues that that you can pick out on
the road and say I can tell from a long
distance away that that's in me. Um, that's a Mazda vehicle. Yes,

(28:19):
some kind of commonalities towards the fleet. So again as
you can say, they all in some way represent a
unified idea exactly. And you think about like a Dodge
Ram pickups they have that cross hair grill in the front.
You think about, you know, the Mazda miatas they've got this, uh,
that certain style, that that certain look that you know,
the front end you can just pick out as being
a Masta car. Yeah, without even necessarily knowing what type

(28:43):
of Muzta is we uh this this is important to
talk about this facelift because for a lot of people
who are not too familiar with the history of Mazda's
it's very easy to think that the third generation began
in two thousand and eight because that's when you would
see the large visual changes. Um stuff like a larger grill, right, uh,

(29:03):
the there's uh, the soft top touring Grand Touring models
have a mesh grill bordered by chrome frame. Just so
everybody knows, I'm stealing from Scott's excellent notes on this one.
It's probably a little bit too detailed. I don't know
if we really need to do that, but you know,
the roadster has a different mesh grill. And then of
course there's new headlights and fog lights. That's important because
you know that's a completely different look. Restyled side skirts,

(29:25):
rear bumper and the tail lights. Even um changes went
inside as well, right, Yeah, there's a restyled instrument panel
um with different graphics for the gauges. Uh. The engine
red line interesting here was raised by five hundred revolutions
per minute UM, at least in the manual shift to
uh it redlines, NOTPM, which is that's really high. Yeah.

(29:48):
They raised the steaks not bad, not bad, um, and
they fine tune the suspension in gearbox so they would
shift a little bit more smoothly, which leads us. I
don't know, Scott, is it time? Is it time for
us to talk about the future. I think so, because
now it gets a little confusing. But you know, they're
they're talking about a fourth generation of meat and that's

(30:09):
not going to come as a surprise to anybody, I
don't think, because this has been out there for a while.
You know car stuff listeners are pretty savvy about all
this stuff. Um, you know one thing, can I can
I just before we do this, I want to I
want to say one last word about the third gen
before we move on to the fourth gen, because we're
getting there and we're nearing the end here. Um. I've
been reading a lot of reviews about the third gen Meata.

(30:30):
There's a lot of people that have driven a lot
of you know, journalist automotive journalists and people who do
blogs and things like that. Uh well, autoblog did a
test drives to the Auto Amics five and the guy's
name is Jeffrey Ross, the guy that wrote this this
right up. And it seems the mirror just about everything
that I've read anywhere else about the m X five meata.
It seems like people really truly love driving this car.

(30:51):
It's a lot of fun. And I guess there's maybe
four or five points or five or six points here
that um he brought up that I think, you know,
I just I'm gonna summarize this real quick, but UM,
I think everybody else feels the same way. It's fun
to drive. It's a well balanced car. I mean, it's
it's really it's got really good power. Not a lot
of power, but good power. It's it's there when you

(31:11):
need it. Um, it's easy to operate the soft top
like we talked about, five seconds you know, open to
close or closed open um. Decent fuel economy that we mentioned,
you know, um that's even with spirited driving, as he've mentioned,
you know, it wasn't hard to hit those numbers. UM
really small. And now this is one thing that maybe
a downside to some people. See I liked that it's small,

(31:33):
but he says, it's really small, But it also feels
small in the road because you're looking around it. You know,
SUV bumpers everywhere when you look to your left or
right right. It's a tiny feel. It's not it's not
great for a primary driver, but you know, it's it's
fun car to drive. Maybe get it out in the
country somewhere and really let it go and um, well,

(31:53):
I think the current Miata doesn't offer a lot of
the options that are available on some of the other
entry level cars. So you know a lot of times
people will get into Miata and and look around and
say like, well, this is pretty basic. I don't know
if I really want to pay this for for this
type of car, and not realizing that, you know, it's
it's a fun to drive car. It's really is meant
to be like this throwback roadster type design. They've they've

(32:14):
included what they have to for federal mandates, and you
know what's required, you know, all the safety features and everything. However,
it doesn't have like you know that I'm gonna make
something up here, but maybe it does now, but um
it doesn't have inboard you know, onboard navigation systems, and
it doesn't have all the bells and whistles. Yeah, it
doesn't have heated and cool seats. Maybe it has heated seats.
I don't know that. You know, I'm not sure of

(32:35):
the entire option list on this thing, but you're gonna
find that it's a little bit more and I hate
to call it bare bones, but a little bit more
scale back than some of the other cars in its class. Maybe, Yeah,
But that's part of the esthetics that is And and
that's the other thing is that he said, it's it's
like a raw and refreshing feeling when you're driving this
because you're not worried about all this other stuff that's

(32:56):
going on. You're not trying to do all this other
all this other stuff trying to fast forward on your
onboard TV screen. Right, very scisely, you're you're driving the car,
and it feels good and it feels right, and that's
what that's what Master Miata is all about. Let me
also point out something we didn't mention. These are agile
little cars too. They handle pretty well. People don't talk

(33:18):
about that as much as no, no, no, and that's
that's size and weight and all that that has kind
of do it in power. I know many kind of
has the market cornered on, you know, calling their their
handling go kart handling and whiptastic and all that stuff
that they have to use. But um Miata has handled
really well also and you can watch that at any
track event. You can upgrade suspension components, you can upgrade

(33:40):
all kinds of parts, which is kind of leading into
what we're talking about in a minute, but not yet.
Um let's let's do before we get to know that's
the very last thing, right fourth Yeah, okay, so let's
talk about the fourth Gin, the two thousand and fourteen
allegedly maybe two thousand fifteen we are hearing now, Yeah,

(34:03):
and that's kind of an update because for while people
were saying two thousand fourteen. Now you can find a
lot of find a lot of talk about the fourth
Gin everywhere on the internet, some of it contradictory, and
you can find some renderings of the thing. You can
you can see what it's supposed to look like. You
know what they what they think it's gonna look like.

(34:25):
Um it's it's an exciting design. I'll tell you that
it's cool and it may even be lighter than the
current generation. Have you been looking at that? I did
not see any weight stats, But that's cool. Well, this
is still you know, okay to let the cat out
of the bag. Whenever we talk about a vehicle before
it comes out, there's always this huge asterisk, right because

(34:47):
we don't know what may or may not make the
final cut. But word on the street is that they're
going to be cutting two hundred to three hundred pounds
from the third generation. Not bad, not bad at all.
And if that happens. If that happens, they could affect
the driving too, if they keep the same engines. Of course,

(35:07):
I don't know if they're gonna keep the same engine.
I doubt if they would. I mean, I don't know
why they would where they wouldn't completely update that as well,
but just to to kind of let people know what's
going on, I mean, the you know, it's rumored that
it was gonna come out in late and then it
was kind of bumped to early and now it's so
it's gets moved back a bit. It's happening, it's just
when is it gonna happen? And and the thing is

(35:28):
that this is the fourth gen Miata is being co
developed with Alpha A Mayo. And what's exciting about this
is now mas is gonna have its own version. There's
gonna be the you know, the Mazda m X five,
which I guess would be the I suppose would be
the n D platform um or d n D designation.
And Alpha Alpha A Mayo is also going to have

(35:51):
a car that they're gonna base on this, which is
going to be called the Alpha Mayo Spider. So Alpha
Mayo's bringing back the Spider. Mas is gonna have its Miyata,
the latest X five Miata, and they're both gonna have
a similar vehicle. They're gonna be priced similarly. I mean,
I think the Miata is estimated around twenty uh possibly
a little more. The Alfa Romeos I think it would

(36:12):
be around thirty maybe just a little bit more. Kind
of depends on the packages that you've had, you know,
the upgrades. But watch for that Alfa Romeo to come out.
And that's not, by the way, that is not the
four C that we're seeing. There's a an Alfa Mail
four C has been kind of going around on the
blog sphere that I guess that a lot of people
are talking about its different. It's a different car. There's
an Alfa a male spider that's coming as well. And

(36:33):
I've seen some well I've shown you a picture of
this thing. Oh yeah, it's beautiful. It's a good looking car.
It's got you know, the uh, I mean very much
the Miata size. Um, maybe just a little more round,
a little more muscular looking. And I think the front end,
you know, it is clearly alpha. I mean it's got
that distinctive Yeah, the distinctive triangular grow and the badging
of course, and different headlights and everything. So it's uh,

(36:55):
it's its own design. Oh and I have I do
have some information. I apologize guys, took me a second
to get there. I do have some information or some
speculation about the fourth generation engine. Uh what what I've
been seeing is now, I don't want to predict something
and be totally wrong. So this is speculative that I've
been seen that the m X five will get a

(37:16):
smaller four cylinder engine. Check this out, Scott one point
three leaders but turbo charged one point three turbo And
you know what, I'm not going to let that scare
me away. One bit because I know what they do
with turbo engines. Now, that's gonna be one powerful one
point three leader engine, right, so they think it will
still hit the one the one sixty horsepower that the

(37:39):
current larger engine has. You said one seven. Oh, man,
I don't know, A man, Okay, that's you know, I
understand that's the current horse power rating and everything, But
I don't know. I feel like they're missing the mark
on that. I mean, I I don't know. I mean,
maybe maybe that's enough. Maybe it's it's plenty in this car.
Maybe it feels great in this car, Maybe there's enough torque.

(38:00):
Maybe whatever is the stakes? When you said one sixty seven,
I'll tell you my my eyebrows one up because I
thought it was going to be closer to two. Yeah,
I'm I'm surprised that they're claiming to make that to
keep that equivalent, you know, but as we are about
to find out, that's not the end of the story.
Well and lighter way to Okay, So what's the what's

(38:21):
the what's the end of the story? Its gott right
before you and I started recording, you hipped me to
a little something, right, Yeah, there's a there's something in
the works here. UM and and this is uh, this
is are you talking about what people are doing to
the older miatas? Yeah, now this is uh, this is
an interesting twist on this whole thing. Now, I'm sure

(38:44):
a lot of people have heard of these and if
you haven't, this is gonna blow your mind when you
see it or when you when you watch one of
these things in action. Now, I think a lot of
people have heard of something called monster miatas before. And
monster miatas incorporate a vh um well v a swap
engine swap into a Master Miata with very minimal exterior

(39:07):
I guess adaptations. You know, you're able to You're able
to swap in these these giant V eights. Now Monster
Miata happens to do it with um a Ford V eight.
They use a five liter engine from a fox body
Mustang donor car okay and strong cars you know. And
you can go to uh www Master Miata webs dot
com and uh and find out in the information about

(39:29):
that all the information. UM, I found a newer kind
of version of this thing that maybe it's just even
more dramatic, I suppose more dramatic than than the Manster
Meata Flying Miata and uh and it's actually flying with
you know the apostrophe at the end. So you can
go to flying Miata dot com. And what they specialize
specialized in is making Miatas accelerate faster, corner harder, and

(39:52):
stop shorter. And they do that with a Corvette engine.
Then they drop a Corvette V eight the LS three
n and from a relatively new like maybe two thousand
eleven Corvette, and they'll put that into a stock Monster
me out of for you. Wow, and that intro sounds
reminds me of the opening for Buyout the six Million

(40:13):
Dollar Man. It's pretty similar now. I mean, I know
the Monster Me Out Of that's kind of the first
in the original and they did it and they you know,
did it well and they still do it, but this one,
and it's incredible. They can get the horse power up
to four hundred and I think it's four and thirty
for the standard version, four hundred and eighty if you
have what they call a hot cam kit, and all

(40:33):
the way up to five hundred and twenty five horse
power with other upgrades. So you know, the seven that
we're talking about in the current version. Compare that with
five five horse power that you can get out of
this Uh this LS three powered Um, you know myatta,
which is amazing. I mean again, Corvette powered me out
as the zero to sixty times? What did you say
for you for the uh, the current version of the the

(40:55):
NC it's around it's a little over seven and a
half seven thinks about seven and a half. All right,
how would you like to do zero to sixty and
the upper three second range? I would love to do that. Yeah,
Well it will cost you, though, Ben, because this is uh,
this is the downside of this dollars for an entire
ground up conversion. Now that's uh, that's the engine that breaks,

(41:17):
the transmission. All that has to be updated. Of course,
the breaks. You can't do it without that, So all
that stuff has to be done. You ship your shipping
in the car, you buy the engine kit and everything
else that goes along with it. They do. They put
it in for you, They do all the work. It's
buttoned up nice and tight. Everything's perfect. But it's gonna
cost you about forty five grand in addition to giving
them the donor car. Yeah. I was gonna say that's

(41:39):
not everything because that doesn't tell but you know what
This is so cool. I mean, it's like you're building
your own and I'm gonna say it a modern day
Shelby Cobra. I mean, that's similar in you know, the
weight to horsepower range. And Okay, it's pretty amazing what
they're doing. I mean, and and for those of you
that are worried about weight, get this. It only adds

(42:01):
two hundred additional pounds of weight to the entire car.
So that's that's an extremely low, um, you know, difference.
I guess you know that what you're the trade off
is really low. Uh, two hundred additional pounds, but you're
gaining three hundred and fifty horse power, you know, which
makes me think that if the fourth gen really does
manage to cut two to three hundred pounds off of

(42:22):
the third Gin, then you could do that conversion and
not really change the total weight. It would still be
third gen weight. Oh that's that's a good point. Then
that would probably be more expensive. Well, how how awesome
would that be to have you know, the Gen four
Miata plus this LUs three conversion from flying Miata and
uh and just absolutely blow everything on the road away

(42:44):
because there's nothing that's going to keep up with this.
I mean, that's like in the that's like you're gonna
have Ferrari performance and in mass of Miata you're going
to you're gonna be able to just stop on anything
on the road. I can tell you that. I mean
there's and no one will unless they hear it, Unless
they hear it coming or they know of your car.
There's gonna be no outward signs that that's in there. Right,
that's a really good point. You can be a sleeper car.

(43:05):
But you know what, they will hear it. That's gonna
be a deep throaty sounding they will. Yeah, it'll it'll
be like that thing where you see somebody who has
a voice that completely doesn't sound like it should from
the person that looks like understood, understood. So again, monster
me outa flying the atto your choice. And I'm sure
there's a couple others out there that are doing it,
people probably doing it in their own garage, but and

(43:27):
there's some there's some amazing upgrade kids, you can do
with these things. And if you have a mas and
Miata that you have upgraded or just maintained, then send
us a picture. We hope that you have enjoyed this podcast.
I'd like to thank Mark again for such an excellent email.
I can always tell it's a really good email when Scott,

(43:49):
when you come in with some notes on it and
a couple of yeah yeah, I had added a few
things on my own and now yeah and we we
hope that you enjoyed this. It looks like the future
is bright for them AUTA, and we're excited to see
what actually comes out with this fourth generation, especially with
that Alpha Romeo. In the meantime, we're gonna get on

(44:10):
the road here and we hope to hear from you soon.
You can write to us on Facebook, drop us a
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(44:33):
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