What do you get when you cross an American wistfulness for cheap British roadsters with a Japanese firm’s readiness to speculate and i...
What do you get when you cross an American wistfulness for cheap British roadsters with a Japanese firm’s readiness to speculate and innovate in order to make its global reputation? In 1989 you got ‘Mazda Experiment, Project Number Five’, which would become the world’s fastest-selling sports car.
The idea of an affordable open-top was hardly new to Japan. Preceding decades had seen oddities such as the Datsun Fairlady, Honda S500 and Toyota Sports 800 emerge, often as their fledgling makers’ first production models. But by the end of the 1970s, with the demise of such icons as the Triumph Spitfire, MG B and original Lotus Elan, the segment was assumed to be in decline.
It was these models, though, that Mazda dissected during the MX-5’s development, and they are among the reasons why it emerged in 1989 as a small, sub-one-tonne, front-engined, rear-drive, perfectly balanced home run. Ironically, the MX-5’s success found a counterpoint almost immediately in the lukewarm reception and ailing sales figures that greeted the all-new Elan which emerged only a few months later, lumbered as it was by a higher price, lumpier looks and front-wheel drive.
The first MX-5 was arguably the model’s dynamic high point. Its successors were generally very good too, but they became progressively more powerful, bigger, heavier and that bit less exciting to drive.
Now Mazda – with its Skyactiv engineering programme in full swing – insists it has returned to the old template. Shorter, lower, wider and – most importantly – lighter, the new MX-5 comes with a choice of either 1.5 or 2.0-litre naturally aspirated petrol engines and the promise of unparalleled ‘Jinba ittai’ – the manufacturer’s catch-all term for oneness between car and driver.
Just as importantly, the car starts at less than £20k, meaning that everyone currently considering a small hot hatch is in the ballpark. Can the new MX-5 do as much as its forebear to turn their heads?
Design & Styling
Size and weight were necessarily preoccupations for the project’s engineers. No one would describe the original MX-5 as large, yet the new model has been made 55mm shorter still. It’s the most compact MX-5 yet and, save for the original, the lightest.
Throughout the development, a rigorous ‘gram strategy’ was applied to ensure that the roadster had no superfluous mass. Thus the all-new suspension, still consisting of front wishbones and rear multi-links, is 12kg lighter thanks to its aluminium components.
The engine frame is aluminium, as are the front wings and bumper reinforcements.
The front cross-member is high-tensile steel, a much higher proportion of which is used in the body, too. The rear cross-member benefits from a more rigid truss structure, while suspension mounts have been reinforced all round. The result is a claimed 100kg reduction in kerb weight compared with the previous MX-5.
That presents the prospect of this car being a true sub-one-tonne rear-drive open-top (Mazda quotes the 1050kg kerb weight of the 1.5-litre car to EU standard, adding 75kg for a driver and luggage), without being as stripped out as a Caterham or as overtly spartan as a Lotus. Moreover, the weight is ideally distributed 50/50 front to back and the centre of gravity is slightly lower than before.
Mazda’s seriousness about making this MX-5 fun to drive by adding lightness is welcome – and crucial when you consider that this is the first model to use electromechanical power steering. It’s a compact dual-pinion set-up located close to the front wheels for increased stiffness. It has a marginally quicker ratio than that of the previous car, while the front wheels’ castor angle is increased for better resistance to understeer.
The MX-5’s engines and gearboxes have been made to measure. Despite being used elsewhere in Mazda’s line-up, each is fettled for the MX-5. The 129bhp 1.5-litre Skyactiv-G petrol engine – related to the one in the Mazda 2 and 3 hatchbacks – gets revised cam timing, a custom crankshaft and a 7500rpm redline, while the 158bhp 2.0-litre version adds a lightened flywheel and pistons.
The rear differential weighs less, too (although it isn’t a limited-slip item in the 1.5-litre car tested), as does the six-speed manual Skyactiv-MT gearbox, which, having been made to emulate the MX-5’s shift action in other applications, gets the starring role here with a simplified linkage for even less resistance.
Interior
For those familiar with the MX-5, the new interior ought to impress – not least by virtue of its freshness. The dashboard architecture is similar to that of the Mazda 2, which is a good thing because the same natty design features and chunky, tactile switchgear work equally well here in the roadster.
If you’re unaccustomed to MX-5s, it’s likely that the cabin’s incredibly compact dimensions will need to sink in before you can meaningfully survey the details. The MX-5 has always been resolutely bijou, and this new car is no different.
Broader adults will find themselves in frequent contact with the centre console, door trim and the sides of the skinny footwell, along with the floorpan bulge that denies you the option of folding your clutch leg away on motorways (a malaise of right-hand-drive cars only).
Moreover, despite a 20mm lower hip point, you sit a little higher than would seem optimal, and the steering wheel still doesn’t adjust for reach.
These factors can combine to make it tricky to get comfortable – tricky enough, in fact, for some people to be put off the prospect entirely, although others will proclaim this the most comfortable MX-5 yet.
More fool the critics, though, because in an age that tends towards profligacy, the MX-5’s cockpit-sized simplicity – once reconciled with – makes for a charming environment.
Nowhere is this better encapsulated than in the manually operated roof. Made 3kg lighter than before and requiring 30lb ft less effort to close, the hood can be operated easily with one hand, even when moving. There’s one spring-loaded clip to unfasten on the header rail, then a click somewhere in the housing behind you to confirm that it’s safely stowed. It takes four or five seconds and, like pretty much everything else about the MX-5, puts everything larger, heavier and motor-driven to shame.
The roof’s tiny size means that the car continues to offer a modest-sized but usable boot. It’s too small for golf clubs but is just big enough for two weekend-away bags. Which seems to us exactly as it should be.
Performance
Your first few miles in this MX-5 reveal a truth that devotees will have suspected and that Mazda’s own engineers hint at when invited to. It’s that this ‘lesser’ 1.5-litre version of the car is undoubtedly the most authentic, the most evocative of the much-loved first-generation MX-5 and, in terms of how it actually performs, arguably the sweetest.
The high-revving character of Mazda’s 1.5-litre four-pot is the reason why. Whereas the 2.0-litre car produces more mid-range torque relative to its peak power, the 1.5 needs to spin to allow the car to hit full stride. And it’ll spin with not only freedom but also gathering force, right the way to the 7500rpm redline.
Still, we’re not talking about a particularly quick full stride, although, needing little over eight seconds to hit 60mph from rest, the car is appreciably faster than the 1989 original and close enough to hot hatch pace for respectability.
And yet this MX-5 plays perfectly to arouse your excitement and seize your enthusiasm as a willing hostage. It hardly matters how fast you’re going.
The temptation starts with an unexpectedly rorty exhaust note, which sounds playful and offbeat even at idle. Blip the accelerator out of gear and the revs flare with promising urgency, then engage first and the MX-5’s mechanically detailed and supremely positive shift quality announces itself. You’re already having an absorbing and special driving experience – and you’ve yet to even turn a wheel.
Gearshift aside, the car’s controls are light and, being so obliging to control, fairly short-geared and revving cleanly from very low revs, it moves away from a standstill with a pleasing lack of inertia. Add some throttle and you’ll pick up speed gradually at first, with limited mid-range torque on tap but with perfect response and a supremely linear delivery of it as the revs rise.
You work this engine intimately and intuitively, like an extension of yourself. Occasionally you’ll wish for more power; it would be wrong of us not to acknowledge that. But most of the time you’ll be too busy revelling in the vivid mechanical interaction and the joy of taking a modern sports car to the redline as and when you choose without worrying unduly about the potential consequences for your driving licence.
Ride & Handling
The instincts of many long-standing MX-5 owners will be to keep the mechanical specification of their car simple, and thereby to give the lauded delicacy of the car’s handling the best chance to thrive. We had the same instincts – hence the chosen specification of 1.5-litre engine, standard suspension, open differential and 16in wheels for our road test subject.
In reality, the MX-5’s handling doesn’t reward that judicious restraint in unqualified terms, in ways to which we’ll come. But that shouldn’t prevent this car from taking its place among the most vibrant, responsive and engaging sports cars available at any price.
From the effortlessness of its hold on the road, through its fine balance and directional agility, to the zapping crispness of its every answer to a few extra degrees of steering angle or mid-corner dab of pedal, this car remains a true sporting great.
On delicacy, meanwhile, nothing short of a Caterham, Lotus or Ariel can equal what the MX-5 brings to the table. The car’s 195-section tyres produce only moderate but perfectly balanced grip levels and therefore don’t overburden the suspension or steering with cornering forces, and they break away into lateral slip with a wonderfully tender progressiveness.
The day of our performance tests started wet but subsequently dried out. It therefore afforded us the opportunity to find out that the MX-5's delicate dry-surface grip level becomes even more tantalising when a bit of surface water is in the mix. In the wet, an uninterested driver might call that grip level worryingly faint - although the MX-5's ESP would look after even them.
In the dry, there's only just enough power to get the rear wheels to break traction with the accelerator during cornering - and only then at very high revs and by a fleeting few degrees of slip angle. It's a tenderness of adjustability that you rarely find in a modern car and is no less enjoyable for its subtlety than a 500bhp Jaguar's handling is for its luridness.
Disengage the ESP - a system that's neither sophisticated nor unobtrusive, unfortunately - and there are familiar ways to have fun with your cornering line, either with a trailed brake or an exaggerated, throttle-off steering input. The MX-5 is sensitive to all.
The electromechanical power steering could actually do with a larger contact patch through which to work, though. On 16in wheels, there’s just a tad too much lightness about the steering wheel and the merest shortage of centre feel and dead-ahead stability about the steering. Meanwhile, with a relatively high 50-profile sidewall, there’s inevitable softness in the handling mix under high lateral loads, taking some precision away – if only on the very edge of adhesion.
Those sidewalls also make the ride a bit excitable over very high-frequency lumps and bumps, because they’re simply too soft to let the suspension do its work. But the rest of the time the MX-5’s ride is easy and fairly laid back. Like that of its forebears, the directional keenness and poise come not from high chassis rates but from the advantages of even weight distribution, a low centre of gravity and driven rear wheels, and so the MX-5 doesn’t feel firm on the road or short of wheel travel. It doesn’t need to.
It’s true that the ride could feel more fluent. Mazda couldn’t get away with the gentleness of the original MX-5’s damper tune today, and so the new car is more tautly checked when disturbed vertically. But it still feels like a natural athlete rather than a reconstructed one – and that’s absolutely vital to its appeal.
MPG & Running Costs
Mazda, in contrast with Toyota’s overzealous positioning of the GT86, has kept the MX-5’s affordability front and centre.
Available in the firm’s SE, SE-L, SE-L Nav, Sport and Sport Nav trim levels, the £18,495 starting price for the 1.5-litre version is about where fast superminis begin, rivalling options such as the Abarth 595C and drastically undercutting a Volkswagen Golf convertible.
The sparsely kitted SE has limited appeal, but our SE-L Nav car featured DAB, a 7.0in touchscreen, Bluetooth, cruise control, air-con and, as the name implies, satellite navigation – and still scraped under the £20k mark (minus metallic paint).
This 1.5-litre car can also claim decent efficiency, with its claimed 47.1mpg reduced only to 46.1mpg during True MPG examination.
Its 139g/km CO2 figure, meanwhile, is almost the same as that of a Ford Fiesta ST – one of only two cars able to match the MX-5 for fun. The other, the GT86, is 41g/km to the worse.
Verdict
We’ve grown used to giving couched verdicts on sports cars, sometimes weighing progress in one direction against compromise in another.
Not so here. There isn’t a single area in which this new Mazda MX-5 fails to surpass its predecessor. It’s shorter, lighter, more spacious and better laid out. It’s sharper-looking but still disarming and distinctive. It’s faster, more frugal and even more vibrant and engaging to drive.
All that and yet the MX-5 is still every inch the same zesty and inimitable car that it was. Its character hasn’t altered at all.
There’s no five-star rating, reflecting the fact that the 1.5-litre mid-spec model tested didn’t quite feel like the definitive version. Most modern sporting tastes will crave a bit more performance than it offers. The 2.0-litre model provides that, as well as even greater handling panache.
And yet the 1.5 has an authenticity that honours the original MX-5. So just pay your money, take your choice and enjoy a far better driver’s car than you’d believe £20,000 could secure.
