Hello and Goodbye

Before purchase (note NSW plates)

As indicated in my last post, I have swapped my 2000 MX5 for this 2004 SE.

I've coveted one of these for a long time, and this one came up on the interwebs and looked OK. I drove the ute to Newcastle to check it out, and wasn't disappointed.

This particular car is unique, with a special interior fitout which I thought might coordinate with the red hardtop. You can look at the pics and decide whether this is in fact the case.

With hardtop in place.

Whilst this one and the previous car are both MX5s, the driving experience is completely different.

The previous car felt soft and slow in comparison. This one, by virtue of a stiffer set of spring rates, tighter steering ratio, and thicker anti-roll bars is further along a continuum which starts at grand tourer and progresses towards sports car.

It also features 17" mags, and lower (40 profile) tyres.

There were actually two different versions of turbocharged MX5s sold in Australia. Read all about it
here
It's actually not as pleasant to drive around the burbs, but once on smooth blacktop out of town, it is a revelation.

This is what makes it so much fun.

What I find particularly attractive is its overtaking ability. The previous car could leave you stranded in the passing lane unless you made careful judgements and kept the revs up by downshifting - usually twice.

This one simply goes once the turbo kicks in, which seems to be about 3000 rpm.

It also has travelled less than half the kilometres of the old one, and should therefore cost less to maintain. The turbo setup is Mazda engineered and conservative. A heavy duty clutch and radiator should help with maintainability.

Jasper Conran interior

It's not perfect. There's extensive road rash on the front bumper, the paint on rear wing (an SE feature) is faded, and the windscreen is pitted. This windscreen issue seems common to MX5s, possibly because they sit low, where there are more stones and detritus flying around.

Replacing the screen and curing the paint blemishes are both improvements I'll attend to ASAP.

Road rash here.

The gearlever knob is also worn, but my friendly local bootmaker can fix that, just as he did for the previous car.

This car does not have the excellent Alpine stereo (with Bluetooth and USB access) that was a feature of the previous car. I thought long and hard about doing a swap, but decided to keep this one original.

Wing is faded (hard to see in this pic)

This means leaving the six stacker CD player (a feature of the SE) in place, and using a Bluetooth adapter to take calls on the go.

The hardtop creaks a lot more in the SE, possibly as a consequence of the firmer suspension settings, but I can live with that. Generally, most of this can be eliminated with careful adjustment of the catches.

I'll keep you posted with the improvements.

The old car sold within a week, for the same price I bought it a year ago. A generous dad bought it for his son and daughter. His wife also has an MX5, as does his eldest daughter, which means there are now three in the family.

That's enthusiasm!