We have had the little MX-5 for coming up to a week now so I thought I would share my first impressions of the whole experience. We decided on the MX-5 as it ticked the boxes of what we wanted from a car for my wife. For the last 3 years she had been driving an A4 and in reality it made little sense having 2 big saloon cars in the family as we rarely used the back seats in either car. On this basis we decided a 2 seater would be fine as would a small town car and as my wife and I hate the 'school run mum' image, with their big 4x4's and keeping up appearances attitude (we are surrounded by them, friends and not!) we decided those trucks made no sense at all. We did consider Boxsters, Z4M's, SLK's and a couple of others but again it made little sense to give her something as quick or as focused and the new MX-5 was probably about where she wanted to be right now in terms of power, fun and running costs. I agreed it was a good car so we dumped the other option, the Abarth 500 Ess and focused on getting the right MX-5 and we tried to set a budget of around £20K for her car.
I made the decision that if we were to buy and MX-5 I wanted the best one and for me that was the 2L Sport Tech model, which effectively had every Mazda option fitted, was the most powerful and had things like an LSD, better suspension and a 6 speed close ratio box, with a longer 6th for cruising. I contacted a friend who owns a load of dealers and he put us in touch with his team up at Blackburn who were exceptional. We turned up for a test drive on a Sunday, after a quick trip to A&E to X-Ray my arm(!) and they had a new 2L Sport Tech sitting there ready for us, together with a nicely laid out 55 mile road test all written out with points of interest and lunch stops and simply gave us the keys and said enjoy. This was a classic soft top car and if I am honest the first thing I noticed was road noise, as did my wife, but you did find yourself getting used to it after time. It was a good road test and we got to try the car on various roads and at the end of it both had big smiles so decided to place an order!
Now came the big decision, Coupe of soft top. Luckily there were 7 new MX-5's in the showroom in various specifications and we were able to evaluate the options and in the end my wife said she wanted the extra convenience of the Coupe (electric hard top) and liked the look better too. I agreed so that is the option we chose. Order was placed and off we went. We collected the car last Sunday and it was well presented and totally unmarked, something of a first for me as ALL of the new cars I have bought and I have bought many have had some issue of some sort. Not this, it had 7 miles on the clock and was spotless and unmarked with all working fine. We singed the paperwork, paid them the wedge and went on our way.
Having had the car for a few days now I can give some more insightful feedback into what I think. It's great, it is a cracking little car that can't fail to put a smile on your face when driving it. Lovely steering, great braking feel and classic old school handling. We are still running it in so I can't really say I have pushed it hard but on some of my local country lanes it is great fun and everything I expected it to be. I have improved it since we bought it using a well known technique of take the 11psi of excess air out of each tyre! It seems Mazda PDI tells dealers to inflate the tyres to 40psi when 29psi is much more sensible. This change alone improves the handling no end, removing the bouncy nature on undulating and bumpy roads and making the car much more pliant. Damping is impressive, the car deals with bumps so much better than her previous A4, smooths the road out no end but it does also have quite a bit of body roll which takes some time to get used to at first and is something I shall look to dial out a bit.
The roof is a delight to use, unclip it like a normal MX-5 and then press a button and 12 seconds later is is packed away behind the rear seats, just like the soft top version and it takes no more space either, with no intrusion into the boot. Very clever that! The voice operated Bluetooth phone seems to work brilliantly well too allowing you to speak pretty much anything, from phone numbers to names without a need for much work and is perfectly usable. The reason it is usable is because of the roof. I have seen reviews, such as the Firth Gear review where they used a sound meter at 30mph to say it was hardly any different but the reality is the Coupe is MUCH quieter inside and MUCH better for it. Personally I would not consider a soft top having now driven the hard top and I am told the hard top is the one people want on the 2nd hand market too. I can see why as other than a small weight difference it's all advantage and really is a no brainer. The roof panels are aluminium and the rear window is glass so it insulates the car much better and the wind noise is greatly reduced too. There is quite a bit of tyre noise however, something you don't really notice in the soft top but becomes more obvious in the Coupe, but as you would expect this is surface dependent. BOSE works well and sounds good and the steering wheel has connections for phone, stereo and cruise control which are simple and easy to use. With roof down you have heated seats to keep your bum warm and full climate control when the roof goes up. Bar a factory fitted Sat Nav, which is not an option the car has pretty much every option you want. Drivers seat goes up and down, reclines and forwards and backwards and the steering column also moves up and down, though not forwards and backwards. I can get a good driving position and I am 6'1 and don't have my head on the roof.
Time will tell how it goes but so far we are seeing around 36mpg which is fair enough. I would expect that to remain much the same as it will improve with miles it will also go down as it gets driven a little harder. I am looking at options to get it lowered and the alignment perfected but other than this I don't see anything else being needed. Tom Tom is in the car for when she gets lost and I am looking forward to our first run on holiday in it. If you want a relatively cheap old school classic with modern build quality and reliability I can't think of a better car for the money and who cares if people think you are a gay hairdresser. They don't know what they are missing, all fool them!
I made the decision that if we were to buy and MX-5 I wanted the best one and for me that was the 2L Sport Tech model, which effectively had every Mazda option fitted, was the most powerful and had things like an LSD, better suspension and a 6 speed close ratio box, with a longer 6th for cruising. I contacted a friend who owns a load of dealers and he put us in touch with his team up at Blackburn who were exceptional. We turned up for a test drive on a Sunday, after a quick trip to A&E to X-Ray my arm(!) and they had a new 2L Sport Tech sitting there ready for us, together with a nicely laid out 55 mile road test all written out with points of interest and lunch stops and simply gave us the keys and said enjoy. This was a classic soft top car and if I am honest the first thing I noticed was road noise, as did my wife, but you did find yourself getting used to it after time. It was a good road test and we got to try the car on various roads and at the end of it both had big smiles so decided to place an order!
Now came the big decision, Coupe of soft top. Luckily there were 7 new MX-5's in the showroom in various specifications and we were able to evaluate the options and in the end my wife said she wanted the extra convenience of the Coupe (electric hard top) and liked the look better too. I agreed so that is the option we chose. Order was placed and off we went. We collected the car last Sunday and it was well presented and totally unmarked, something of a first for me as ALL of the new cars I have bought and I have bought many have had some issue of some sort. Not this, it had 7 miles on the clock and was spotless and unmarked with all working fine. We singed the paperwork, paid them the wedge and went on our way.
Having had the car for a few days now I can give some more insightful feedback into what I think. It's great, it is a cracking little car that can't fail to put a smile on your face when driving it. Lovely steering, great braking feel and classic old school handling. We are still running it in so I can't really say I have pushed it hard but on some of my local country lanes it is great fun and everything I expected it to be. I have improved it since we bought it using a well known technique of take the 11psi of excess air out of each tyre! It seems Mazda PDI tells dealers to inflate the tyres to 40psi when 29psi is much more sensible. This change alone improves the handling no end, removing the bouncy nature on undulating and bumpy roads and making the car much more pliant. Damping is impressive, the car deals with bumps so much better than her previous A4, smooths the road out no end but it does also have quite a bit of body roll which takes some time to get used to at first and is something I shall look to dial out a bit.
The roof is a delight to use, unclip it like a normal MX-5 and then press a button and 12 seconds later is is packed away behind the rear seats, just like the soft top version and it takes no more space either, with no intrusion into the boot. Very clever that! The voice operated Bluetooth phone seems to work brilliantly well too allowing you to speak pretty much anything, from phone numbers to names without a need for much work and is perfectly usable. The reason it is usable is because of the roof. I have seen reviews, such as the Firth Gear review where they used a sound meter at 30mph to say it was hardly any different but the reality is the Coupe is MUCH quieter inside and MUCH better for it. Personally I would not consider a soft top having now driven the hard top and I am told the hard top is the one people want on the 2nd hand market too. I can see why as other than a small weight difference it's all advantage and really is a no brainer. The roof panels are aluminium and the rear window is glass so it insulates the car much better and the wind noise is greatly reduced too. There is quite a bit of tyre noise however, something you don't really notice in the soft top but becomes more obvious in the Coupe, but as you would expect this is surface dependent. BOSE works well and sounds good and the steering wheel has connections for phone, stereo and cruise control which are simple and easy to use. With roof down you have heated seats to keep your bum warm and full climate control when the roof goes up. Bar a factory fitted Sat Nav, which is not an option the car has pretty much every option you want. Drivers seat goes up and down, reclines and forwards and backwards and the steering column also moves up and down, though not forwards and backwards. I can get a good driving position and I am 6'1 and don't have my head on the roof.
Time will tell how it goes but so far we are seeing around 36mpg which is fair enough. I would expect that to remain much the same as it will improve with miles it will also go down as it gets driven a little harder. I am looking at options to get it lowered and the alignment perfected but other than this I don't see anything else being needed. Tom Tom is in the car for when she gets lost and I am looking forward to our first run on holiday in it. If you want a relatively cheap old school classic with modern build quality and reliability I can't think of a better car for the money and who cares if people think you are a gay hairdresser. They don't know what they are missing, all fool them!
We're all pretty much normal income peeps in here so have to consider value for money as an important factor when buying a car. For a lot of us, buying new doesn't make sense when this is considered.
