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.
It's no use being tall or large if you want to own an MX-5. The sporty seats are fine if you are built like a racing snake, but if you're a fat bloke you'll feel wedged in.
You buy an MX-5 to feel the wind in your hair and to reconnect with your devil-may-care approach to life. To hell with space, and if you occasionally bang elbows with your passenger, then so be it. That said, the MX-5 still is still pretty comfortable and the uprated dampers make the ride less bumpy than in the pre-facelift version.
You get 150 litres of bootspace - that's not bad. We managed to get a couple of weekend bags in there with a bit to spare.
The engine is a little noisy, however, and you do get a fair bit of transmission whine coming into the cabin. Mazda has also fitted a gizmo called the 'Induction Sound Enhancer' on its six-speeder. The idea is to make it sound more exciting. Nice idea, but we think it just produces more of a racket. 'Exciting' it is not.
The soft top is more susceptible to wind noise but it's tolerable. Put the roof down and it's surprisingly civilised. It does get rather billowy at motorway speeds - but what do you expect?
The standard 1.8i soft-top offers 16" alloys, electric and heated door mirrors, electric windows, height-adjustable leather steering wheel with audio controls, a six-speaker CD stereo and iPod connection. The absence of air con on the base 1.8i seems a bit stingy though - you'll have to pay £550 extra to get climate control.
Go for the 2.0-litre and you get side airbags, but pay even more for the Sport and there's 17" alloys, heated leather seats, climate control, a Bose sound system with 6-CD changer and seven speakers, cruise control and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as Bilstein dampers. The Powershift models add the sequential paddleshift system.
Climate control is standard on the Coupe along with the extra chrome trim, but the added equipment on the higher spec models are in line with that on the soft-top versions.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mazda MX-5
wrote on 12 09 2007
wrote on 27 02 2007