Chasing a Blue Miata, 34 Years and Counting
There was no internet then, so I must have used the kitchen phone in my parents’ house to find out that the Mazda dealership on 8 Mile Road had the first Miata in town. It was 1989, and high-school me convinced my father to visit the dealership just to look at the Mariner blue car sitting in the service bay, not yet ready to be displayed in the showroom.
This story originally appeared in Volume 18 of Road & Track.
Such was the impact of the first Miata, particularly on a boy who drove to school in an ill-performing but generally presentable metallic blue 1971 MG Midget. The first Miata’s 116-hp 1.6-liter might as well have been a big-block V-8 to me. My 1275cc MG drizzled out 62 hp—when it made any at all.
I was in love.
I didn’t even get to drive a Miata until I was a college intern at Autoweek. I would steal away for solitary lunches in the magazine’s long-term Laguna blue 1994 Miata (now with a fat 128 hp from 1.8 liters). I made a racetrack of the small, wooded lanes on the interior of Detroit’s Belle Isle Park. I’d do a few laps, break to eat a sandwich while sitting in the driver’s seat, and then do a few more laps, dodging white deer and launching the car into the air over a small, steep bridge. It was magic. The Miata was light and agile, and I almost fit into it. It did everything better than my old MG, yet it still felt elemental. Essential.
I was at Car and Driver when the ND Miata arrived in 2016. So I spec’d a long-term loaner and spent as much time in it as a now father of two could manage. If the NA looked like an adorable Pokémon, the ND looked like a mischievous one. At 155 hp, the ND’s 2.0-liter almost kept up with the rising tide of output in the industry. The ND was not a fast car. But it was light and agile, and I still didn’t really fit in it. And I was in love all over again.
For 30-some years, there has always been Miata. An entire generation has grown up unaware of how lucky it is to have always had the Miata around. It’s the automotive constant of the modern era, one that has amazingly never been screwed up too badly and is as good as it’s ever been.
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