Category: Roadsters 
Price Range: £15,000 to £19,695
Fun to drive, proper sports car looks, cheap to run.
Ride can be harsh, cramped interior.
This facelift is an improvement, but it's hardly necessary.
Suspension tweaks, revvier 2.0-litre engines and the continuation of retuned Bilstein dampers on sportier models all help to make the facelifted MX-5 just that little bit better on the road.
It's maybe a little more pointy into the corners, a little flatter and precise in the middle of the bends and a less prone to oversteer, but it's hardly a revolution.
It's because the current Mazda MX-5 does its job perfectly well and it's hard to make it that much better. The rear-wheel-drive configuration gives it that extra fun factor in the twisty bits, and on a dry road it'll stick to the tarmac like glue. It's nicely balanced and predictable - but much less forgiving if the surface is wet. Give it too much throttle and the rear will start to step wide until the standard ESP sorts things for you. Considering this is a cutesy little open-top we can't imagine its target audience clapping their hands together at the prospect of a wet weekend punctuated by plenty of heart-in-mouth slides.
The MX-5 isn't blessed with scintillating performance. The 125bhp 1.8i will take you from 0-60mph in 9.9s and 158bhp 2.0-litre will cover the same ground in 7.6s. Top speed is 120mph for the 1.8i and 132mph for the 2.0-litre and the hard-top goes fractionally faster at 135mph.
And so we come to the transmission. Despite a pair of paddles it's a traditional automatic rather than a more complicated twin clutch or automated manual, but that said the paddleshift system works well. It uses a combination of buttons and paddles located on both sides of the wheel: you push the buttons to change down, blip the paddles towards you to change up. It's easy enough to master - once you've got used to the buttons.
The changes are slick, unflustered and much smoother than the straightforward auto, but the novelty soon wears off. It's nice on the open road but impractical in busy traffic. The system costs £500, yet it's markedly slower than the manual. The auto will get to 60mph in 8.5s - almost a second slower than the normal gearshift - and that undermines the case for shelling out extra for the paddleshift. It's a gimmick, really.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mazda MX-5
wrote on 12 09 2007
wrote on 27 02 2007