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Mazda Miata

Jay Lamm on Mazda's revamped Miata, a new(er) retro sportscar.

If you're tired of being cut off by blondes in little sports cars these days, blame the Miata. The traditional light, small, 2-seat roadster was a dead duck when Mazda brought this car out in 1989, and it was cheap and cute and good enough to revive the whole niche.
Which, eventually, left Mazda with a problem. Now that the Miata had spawned a ton of competitors, how would the original fight back? Styling and technology had come a long way since '89, even for an intentionally retro design-so should they leave their cash-cow alone and hope for the best, create a totally new successor, or maybe split the difference?

Mazda Miata Darwin or Lose

Most enthusiasts, myself included, have a knee-jerk love for ground-up redesigns. And this notion isn't without merit: The creators of the first MX5-internally called LOOS, for Light Weight Sports-fought hard for an all-new car, and luckily Mazda's bean-counters were too busy with other - things to bother stopping them. As a result, the LWS team got to create a fresh, pure design from the ground up; they didn't have to make compromises to fit the Miata over some pre-existing car's hardpoints.

That was amazing, all the more so since the LWS was so risky. At the time, no one knew if traditional sports cars like the MGB and TR6 had disappeared because nobody was buying them or, as Mazda Motor of America VP George McCabe argued, :"because nobody was making them." Mazda bet it was the latter, and 450,000+ units later one assumes they were right.
So one way to create the next Miata would've been to do it just like the first one: Take a few pre-existing driveline parts and bolt them to an all-new chunk of steel that looked nostalgic on the outside but was bang-up-to-date internally. On the other hand, simple evolution had its advantages, too. For one thing, the next Miata would serve exactly the same function as the last one, so spinning the '98 off the '97 wouldn't be such a huge leap-not like making a 2-place sports car out of a 4-door sedan chassis. And the existing Miata platform did have lots of life left in it-it was a little flexible compared to its newer rivals, a little short on carrying capacity, and the styling was a little dated, but all in all there was still a lot to work with.
Most importantly, the current Miata's tooling and development were already paid for, which would be critical to keeping the new car's price down where normal folks could afford it. So evolution it would be, of course. In fact, according to Tom Matano-the affable design guru of MRA, Mazda's American R&D wing-the ground-up approach was "...barely considered. We knew (the current) Miata was really good already, so why waste the money?"

Mazda Miata Interior Fossil Record

Happily, the '98 Miata is everything that evolution should produce. It uses the same basic unibody as before, but with strategically strengthened geometry around the A-pillar, transmission tunnel, and front and rear bulkheads. The result is a noticeably stiffer, tighter structure that feels more than a match for the current Z3, the Miata's closest rival in America. The powerplant is basically the same 1.8-liter Four as in '97, but now it features larger and straighter ports, new cams, a higher 9.5:1 compression ratio with knock control, and a variable-length intake tract good for seven extra horses (to 140 bhp @ 6500 rpm) and five more pounds of torque (119 @ 5500), all of it delivered across a flatter and meatier powerband. The same 4-wheel independent suspension is carried over with relocated pivot points for improved toe control, less torque reaction, and a lower front roll center. And while the trunk is only 10% bigger, by moving the battery and spare tire under the floor Mazda has finally opened it up to hard-sided luggage or even- gasp!-a golf bag or two. The top is also greatly improved, featuring a standard glass rear window with defroster and a revised frame that's easier to erect one-handed.

Behind the wheel, all these tweaks make the car about a half-second faster to 60, snappier everywhere in the rev band, sharper on turn-in, even easier to catch in a slide, and considerably more confidence-inspiring at speed. Perhaps the biggest subjective change is in the steering system: A fat Nardi leather wheel is now standard across the board, and it bolts to a much more insulated and stable column. If the outgoing Miata had a single source of disquiet, it was the motions and vibrations transmitted through the wheel-now everything feels totally tight and stable there, adding immeasurably to the sense of quality and rigidity.
Mazda scored another coup in reducing the Miata's weight while increasing its structural integrity. The second-generation car is about 45 pounds lighter than the original, more than 20 of these coming from the switch to fixed headlights. (That's a fine place to lose weight, too, being at the all-important extreme end of the car.) The new formed lamps aren't as distinctive as they might be, but they replicate the original car's turn-signal eyebrows to retain the Miata identity.
"When you saw the new car on the road," Matano explains, "we wanted you to think at fifty yards out, 'What's that? That's a Miata, right?' Then when it got closer, you'd say 'That is a Miata, but it's a new one.'" This is exactly what the revised styling does, and the new shape is a lot more subtle and sophisticated than it seems at first glance. Length is down a mere 3mm, width is up by just the same amount, and the height is unchanged. But every exterior panel (including the aluminum hood) has been reshaped to combine the old car's cues and proportions with a considerably more modern shape. "The sides were the most dated," Mazda's stylist continues, "so that's where we changed it the most." The MX5 now wears a sultry, sculpted profile and RX7-like doorcuts that make the outgoing model's tube shape seem instantly out of style.
Similarly, healthy flaring of the fender's upper sections (a la the '95 M Speedster showcar) imparts a considerably wider, more muscular look without noticeably changing the dimensions. Track is up marginally (lOmm in front and 20 at the rear), but the wheelbase remains the same. The fact that the Miata's footprint has barely changed at all makes its remarkably improved visual stance-particularly with the new 15-inch optional alloys-all the more amazing.

Gene Pull

If there's a downside to all these refinements, it must be that some of the old car's raucous nature has been lost, just as it was when the original 1.6-liter Miata gave way to the stiffened 1.8 for 1994. While the interior dimensions are unchanged, a so-called Aeroboard is now standard to tame wind noise at speed (and double as a fence for the cargo shelf). Classier materials and rethought insulation make the cockpit fairly dignified, but the previous 1.8's exhaust note-itself tamer than the 1.6's-is muted even more now. You can bet Mazda disassembled a lot of Z3s in creating this car, but one of the things they shouldn't have shot for was the Bimmer's distant, flatulent engine sound. The new Miata's doesn't come off nearly as bad as that, but it ain't what it could be.

This creeping maturity aside, Mazda has pulled off quite a coup with the '98 Miata, combining most of the earlier car's strengths with enough real improvements to keep it up to date. Amazingly enough, they may also have done all this without raising the window sticker. "God willin' and the yen don't rise," says PR flak Fred Aikins, the base stripper's price should remain a bit over $19,100 and the top end should be someplace near 25 grand. (Option packages will also parallel the old car's, ascending through Base, stand-alone Power Steering, Touring Package, Popular Equipment Group, and finally the Leather Package. The R Package again stands alone.)
If the Miata really does stay at the same prices for 1998, it will keep the car in a completely different world from its German-designed rivals and right in the heart of the market. That, without doubt, is survival of the fittest.

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