For all the ways in which the Miata slaughters the Solstice -- steering, handling, balance, acceleration, fuel economy, shift quality, clutch feel, exhaust note, seat comfort, storage space, cupholders, top operation, reliability (just to name thirteen) -- the Pontiac trumps Mazda in at least one department: sound quality.  Even with the top dropped, a Solstice shod with that 225-watt Monsoon option seems to pack enough punch to blow the tops off the cars around you.  By contrast, the system in the Miata, Bose or otherwise (ours was otherwise), lacks the will to win the war with the outside world.  After 50 MPH, notes just kind of get lost in the shuffle and fade away.  While we're on it, it's a little repulsive of Mazda to require buying the 6-disc changer to get MP3 playback, and those looking for an iPod plug are completely SOL.

Call it one small but sure victory in Pontiac's favor.  Aside from that 17% annual sales lead, of course.

Brian Sy, Automotive Editor, 21,150 miles

My buddy Ken saw my since-retracted "dibs" post about our 2006 Mazda Miata and gave me a call.

"You don't even like blue cars. You hated my blue CRX. Why would you buy that?" he groused.

"Umm Errr," mumbled I. Then I retorted with some unkind comment about the lameness of his CRX's particular shade of baby blue. But basically, he had me dead to rights.

Continue reading...

I hereby retract my decelaration of "Dibs" vis-à-vis the 2006 Mazda Miata.

In fact, what you see here could easily cover a Lotus Exige S or a BMW 335i with money left over. I sure hope the new kitchen is worth it.

I guess this means the field is wide open once again.

Dan Edmunds, Director of Vehicle Testing and Kitchen Expansion @ no miles

On Saturday morning, the Miata's odometer was 750 miles short of the 20,000-mile mark. On Sunday night, it was 67 miles beyond it. In-between, the MX-5 went on an 800-mile tour of central California, because, well, this is the kind of car that gives meaning to otherwise arbitrary milestones and makes you want to celebrate them. So I found a bunch of empty, twisty roads -- CA Hwy 146, CA Hwy 25 and Panoche Rd. (otherwise known as J1 on maps) -- and drove the car pretty hard. It was fun. For $24K, I can't think of any other car that offers this level of driver interaction and satisfaction. A Mustang isn't as sharp. A Civic Si isn't as overtly adjustable. 

The roadster's folded vinyl top offered itself as a makeshift picnic table. No problems surfaced during the trip, aside from a recurrence of the foggy radio display during 80-degree weather in the Central Valley. Also, there's now a mysterious rattle in the vicinity of where the soft top meets the windshield header on the driver's side. You can only hear it with the top up. Of note is the fact that it started after my run on the J1, which has more mid-corner bumps than it does smooth pavement.

I wasn't able to record the exact 20,000 milestone, as it happened on an exitless stretch of Interstate 5.

Erin Riches, Senior Content Editor, 20,067 miles

This is our Mazda MX-5's last week in the long-term test fleet. Next week it goes to the body shop and after it's back, we'll put it up for sale, unless of course Dan calls in his dibs. So here's your opportunity to offer parting comments on the roadster -- good, bad, friendly, mean or otherwise.

I'll start: I'll miss the Miata's insistent, sportbike-like exhaust note, super straight tracking on the freeway, and near infinite U-turnability. And these gauges. Are these not the best gauges in the world?

Erin Riches, Senior Content Editor, 19,177 miles

Poor Miata :(  Getting rear-ended once back in October (while minding its own biz stopped at a red light) wasn't enough.  Sunday, while I was waiting to pull into a rotary, it got nailed again.   

I was waiting to enter the rotary, moved up closer to the circle entry and stopped (there was a minivan coming 'round the circle so I wanted to wait for it to go by) and Bam!, got rear-ended. I'm guessing that the girl in the TrailBlazer behind me expected me to just blast out there and hug the circle's right lane.  But as you can't predict that someone in the circle (who has the right-of-way) isn't going to change lanes without warning, I wasn't going to chance it.

After the jolt and subsequent head-snap I received, I expected the rear of the Miata to be crumpled yet at a glance it looks almost unharmed.  The give-aways are the larger than normal gap between the trunk lid and rear filler panel as well as the scuff and slight waviness in the bumper.  The other driver was all apologies and we quickly exchanged information after we found a safe place to pull over.  Now it's off to the body shop...

John DiPietro, Automotive Editor @ 19,082 miles.

 

 

Since I joined Edmunds.com, I haven't driven my own car very much. For the record, it's a 1991 Mazda Miata with 175,000 miles on the clock. The soft top is rotted out, so I keep the hard top on most of the time. The red paint on the bumpers and mirrors has faded to a grody patina and the moldings are looking powdery.

I drove it in to work three days ago, for old time's sake. All the things I love about the Miata are still there: nice steering (mine is an unassisted manual rack), direct and positive shifting, and edgy handling. But man does it need more horsepower. 115 ponies (most likely miniature show ponies) just don't get the job done. And despite the tepid thrust, it is loud inside. Cowl shake is more insistent than I'd remembered too -- even with the extra rigidity afforded by the clamped-on hard top.

For the last couple of days I've been sprinting around in our 2006 Mazda Miata long-termer. Now we're talking horses! Not quite beer wagon-hauling draft horses, but getting there. Compared to mine, this thing knows how to get out of its own way. 

Even without a hard top, our '06 is much quieter much less vibratory than my '91. The familiar shifter remains nice and snappy. But I keep forgetting sixth is there. Old habits die hard, I guess. It's still damn tossable, even though the rear end doesn't feel as planted when I hustle around the bumpier bits of pavement in my neighborhood. Although I prefer the raw feel of my old sled's manual rack, the steering here is still exceptionally precise and communicative.

I'm going to hate to see this one go. Perhaps I'll finally convert the ancient one into a Spec Miata and buy the '06 for street duty. *rubs hands together*

I call dibs!

Dan Edmunds, Director of Vehicle Testing @ 18,987 miles

Tired of hearing how much useful storage space our long-term Miata has? Well, then, you should probably skip over this post. However, in my rush to get to the airport on Saturday morning (while running late... as usual), I can't tell you how grateful I was when my 20" rollaboard carry-on bag, even in "expanded" form, dropped right into the the Miata's trunk and allowed the lid to close. Of course, I have a companion story to tell about using the Pontiac Solstice for this same task last fall -- in this story, my overstuffed rollaboard was wedged in the front-passenger seat, bumping my hand each time I reached over to shift. Suffice to say, the Mazda Miata has a lot going for it in the way of daily convenience.

Erin Riches, Senior Content Editor

One area in which I can't give our long-term MX-5 a bye is interior plastics quality. The questionable pebble-grain stuff on the Miata's pillars and dash was easier to overlook when the cheaply outfitted Solstice was in the fleet. Now almost 19,000 miles on, reality is showing through in the form of ugly scratches on the driver-side A-pillar and glovebox.

Maybe an interior detail would help mask the blemishes, but there's no getting rid of them entirely.

Erin Riches, Senior Content Editor, 18,723 miles

We'll admit it. This is not the sort of tire wear that you see in normal use. We've abused these tires. When you've got a few minutes after the testing schedule has been completed and there's all this empty asphalt, you just can't help yourself (or so one of our test crew reports).

No wonder. Since production began in April 1989, the Miata has become the most popular two-passenger sports car of all time by a large margin. It's become a standard of reference, a car that has taught an entire generation how to drive.

Of course, the driving skills that people learn seem to vary.

Last weekend, we drove our long-term MX-5 to Willow Springs International Raceway to see some friends run in an SCCA event, and there were 45 entries in the class devoted to Spec Miata. Every one of Spec Miata drivers seemed to have a different idea about the fast way around the track.

Over 1500 Spec Miatas have been built across the country, and so far as I've been able to tell, each one is driven by somebody with a different idea about the right way to get around the track.  

The Miata might have taught everybody how to drive, but apparently not everybody learned the same things.

Michael Jordan, Executive Editor @ 18,400 miles