Mazda Miata / MX-5

The MX-5 arrives in the UK!

Mazda UK officially launched the MX-5 in the UK on Wednesday, 14th March 1990. That weeks issue of the weekly Autocar & Motor came out on the same day and featured a Red MX-5 on the cover of that weeks issue with the caption 'Brilliant!' in very large letters (of course :-) ), and contained the first review of a UK-spec and UK-registered car driven on UK roads. Before this time the UK-spec cars had been tested by most magazines at the launch in Greece, all with varying degrees of high praise (but always high praise). The asking price was £14,895.

 "Nimble, precise, even, smooth - wonderful" Autoweek

 "With 1960s style allied to 1990s sophistication and reliability, the MX-5 looks like a winner" Autocar & Motor

 "Just born and already a star" Road & Track

 "We felt like cheering" Car & Driver

 In common with the US Miata, the main specs stayed the same: 114bhp (6500rpm) engine with 100lb/ft of torque (at 5500rpm). At the beginning, there was only ever one spec level available - the base car plus: Electric windows, leather Momo steering wheel (no airbag), rear foglight and side repeater indicators to meet UK regulations and colour-coded wing mirrors. The UK never got the boot-mounted brake light unfortunately! You could choose from Red, Bright Blue (like in the Mazda logo), White or Metallic Silver (extra cost).

 In late 1991 ABS brakes became standard (with a slight redesign to the instrument binnacle to accomodate the extra lights) and an interior boot release (silly idea if you ask me, the boot being the only safe place on a convertible). The nice whip aerial was also replaced with a silly electric one too.

 Next came the special editions: British Racing Green metallic (with brown leather seats and door facings, brown carpet, wooden steering wheel/gear knob/handbrake, and spoked-style alloys). Black (again, brown leather... why not black!? The brown stuck out horribly against the black plastic of the rest of the interior) with wide, pretty alloys.

 After Mazda won the 1992 Le Mans 24hrs, a very special edition of 24 very garish (and expensive at around £20,000!) MX-5s complete with BBR Turbo, suspension kit, turbo wheels & tyres and a full bodykit were unleashed. Resplendent in white/flourescent orange & green paintwork, they were hard to miss! To date I've only ever seen two of these models in the UK, one in a service station on the M5, the other in a car park in Kingston-Upon-Thames. I've now heard that two of these were taken back and resprayed totally black (I approve :-) ), leaving 22 rather obvious cars.

 In July 1994 the 'new' MX-5 arrived in the UK with the 1.8i (1839cc, 130bhp) engine from the 323GT. There were now two distinct models: a base one at pound;14,495 (no ABS, steel wheels - yuck, no airbag but the nice slim Momo wheel as before, nice manual-adjust mirrors, manual windows, whip aerial, no door pockets or metal speaker surrounds) and a 'S' model at £17,395 with all the toys (although most of them look disgusting and spoil the effect - a huge airbagged steering wheel, huge ungainly electric wing mirrors, electric aerial, silly door pockets and strange speaker surrounds, but it does have ABS, air-con, and some very nice alloys wearing 195 rubber).

 As you might be able to tell from my comments above, if I was buying a MX-5 now I'd screw the ABS & Airbag and buy a low-spec one plus a set of sexy alloy wheels: recently I saw a MX-5 with 3-spoke alloy wheels (45 profile tyres) and it looked wonderful.

 

My MX-5

One of the first UK models, my white MX-5 was registered on the 21st March 1990 - exactly 1 week after the launch, by Motorhouse at Stroud. As with many early MX-5s it was kept for only a short time by the first owner before he sold it on (at a profit) due to the long (at that time, 6 months) waiting list. Unusually, it didn't come with the special Dunlop SP Sport 89 tyres that had been designed specifically for the MX-5, but rather with Bridgestone Potenzas: the only explaination I could get was that the first 250 cars, like the pre-launch ones in Greece, came with Bridgestones because the Dunlop tyres weren't available at the time.

 Eventually (due to problems with the local Mazda dealer - BWOC near Weston Super-Mare) I took delivery of my car in May, just missing the hottest 2 weeks of the year (arrrrgh!) - still, better late than never, and it was nicely run in at 750 miles.

 After a few weeks it became very apparent that it wasn't anywhere near fast enough - previously I'd had a 1986 Honda CRX 1.6i-16 (125bhp & more torque than the standard MX-5) and I was wildly misjuding some overtakes! I decided that when I could afford it I'd get the recently announced turbokit: this was to be developed by BBR (Brodie Brittain Racing) and would be Mazda-approved so it wouldn't invalidate my guarantee.

 After a year or so and 17,000 miles the tyres needed replacing so I decided to get the turbo-style 15" wheel & Dunlop D40M2 205/50ZR15 tyre set instead of buying another set of thin rubber. The transformation in the cars looks was amazing: any car looks 100% better with wheels that fill the wheelarches. Unfortunately, I was now rather short on power to unstick the rear wheels so those blissful four-wheel drifts toward roundabout exits I'd been enjoying until then were out - I had to make do with going round corners very fast instead. Even without any suspension mods, the difference between 60 and 50 profile tyres was very noticable - ridges and small bumps really shake the car now.

 Finally, after another year and 10,000 miles, I bought the turbo setup from Lansdown Mazda in Bath - a really nice dealer! The difference was amazing, with seamless accelleration right through the gears without getting bogged down at all - but the noticable torque peaked much earlier, at about 5,000rpm as opposed to 6,500rpm without the turbo. I was getting addicted to the (suprisingly loud) 'phoooo' noise as the wastegate popped open on upshifts too! In icy weather being able to hear the whine of the turbo spinning up turned out to be very useful, giving me about 1/2 a second warning of when the back end was about to go and 'do its own thang' on black ice (ouch!).

 I've only ever had one breakdown, at about 44,000 miles, when the auxiliary ECU that provides a turbo fuelling map for the injectors decided that the engine was on full boost constantly and so dumped all the fuel it could into the engine all the time, meaning it wouldn't start/idle and gave out huge black clouds of smoke (causing a screwed catalyst I suppose, although the last emissions test didn't prove to be a problem). Unfortunately, this happened a whole month outside the 36 month guarantee period and so I got a nasty shock: Mazda quoted 1200 pounds (+VAT) for a new ECU. Landsdown Mazda pleaded with Mazda Customer Service and they agreed to pay 2/3rds of the cost seeing as I was only just out of guarantee, but this still seemed a little steep for me. I called BBR directly (they manufactured most of the parts for the turbo themselves, including the piggyback ECU) and in the end they fixed the box for 75 pounds including re-tweaking it: all that had gone was the pressure sensor.

 One word of warning with the Turbo wheelset: the wheels came with brake dust shields which Mazda assured me woudln't affect brake cooling, so I fitted them. Two sets of front discs later (two skimmings and two replacement sets!) I decided that they were lying. I didn't even get a chance to half-wear the pads (I've still got the pads for when the current set wear out...)

 As I write I've covered 74,000 miles and I'm looking forward to the summer. Next on the list is the Koni damper spring/stiffened roll bar set, either from Mazda UK or from Racing Beat in the USA to cut down the body roll. I'm now also on my second set of Pirelli P-Zero 205/50 ZR-15's, which are very, very grippy (but wear out a bit more quickly than the now-discontinued Dunlops...)

I've just fitted an on-board computer - see the MP3mobile page, and I've got on order some of the Moss grooved front brake discs and high-performance pads, which will hopefully help with the warped discs I've been suffering from!

 All the pictures of G276 BFH in this archive are of my car at various stages in its 8 years-and-still-not-dead life.

 

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