Retro review: the third-gen (NC) Mazda MX-5

This review was originally published in Issue 143 of Top Gear magazine (2005)

Although Mazda has changed everything on the new MX-5, the idea is the car makes you feel magically happy in just the same way it always did. A good, pretty little roadster is one
of the great, simple, unchanging pleasures of life, like a Sunday roast or walking on the cliffs at sunset.

In the middle of a car industry that can’t bear to stop fiddling, you’ve got to give a warm nod to the MX-5 team for its admirable focus. It didn’t try to take the MX-5 into new and strange engineering lands. No turbocharger, no folding hard top (not even a powered roof), no four-wheel drive or high-tech gubbins. The idea was just to modernise it where needed. And, of course, make it look slightly different so people will notice and buy another. Sports car sales always fall away after a few years, and the MX-5 isn’t immune – even though it’s now officially the biggest selling roadster in history, at three-quarters of a million. And the vast majority of those are still on the road, a reminder that one of the most important simple pleasures of having an MX-5 is that it runs like a Swiss watch. 

Snuggling down into the cockpit is easier than before. The seats are still simple little buckets, and the high centre tunnel still helps hug you securely when the cornering gets frenzied, but there’s more room now: slightly more cockpit length and a deep breath’s more width too, which is most welcome – well, it was just like sitting in the bath before. Your legs and arms are set straight ahead, the gearlever is just an arm’s flick from the steering wheel. It’s all perfectly laid out, and you are poised for action.

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The engine fires to a deeper note now, a four-pot sports car note as straightforwardly evocative as a tight guitar-bass-drums pub band. It revs, cleanly as you like, to and beyond the 6,700rpm redline, flowering to 160bhp when you give it the full beans. It’s not a torquey engine, but delivery is predictable – no untoward troughs or spurts – and flicking around the gearbox keeps it on the boil. Besides, that power is enough for just 1,120kg. However, there was, on the test car, a little softness to the response. I wanted the throttle to be sharp enough to cut the national debt, but instead there was a mild lack of enthusiasm. I’ll be generous and put it down to the car’s newness.

Demolishing that speed is all part of the fun. This car fits you like a well-worn trainer, all its controls matched in effort and travel, so it’s a snap to flick down through the gears, heel-and-toeing while you tip deep into the braking force. The middle pedal is short and snappy, but not so aggressive it’ll bite your leg, and the ABS arrives with real finesse. The six-speed gearbox is standard on the top-spec version and comes from the RX-8. By almost any standard it snaps about the gate with ultra-short exactness. But not by one standard: the original five-speed is even better, and it’s still available. Six cogs is really overdoing it on a car that rarely goes beyond 100mph.

The MX-5 is supposed to be your extrovert little mate and, boy, does it get into character when you roll your wrists on the steering wheel. It darts into bends, can’t get enough of them, sniffs them out, tugs at your sleeve and pulls you into the game. This is fun when you’re trickling through the suburbs, but here’s a funny thing, when you start to load it into proper corners, doubts surface. While it’s as eager as ever, it feels like it’s holding something back from you, like it’s over-tyred and can’t quite communicate. The old one, on its biggest tyre option, was the same. Has Mr Sheen been along and swept away some of the original MX-5’s fairy dust? Well, gird your loins, push it a bit harder, and find out.

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Aaaaah, that’s better. One more time, harder again. Woah. That is absolutely sensational. [Steady on, Paul – Ed.] As you really load it up, this thing just comes alive, the steering opening up a great plate-glass window of transparency, flooding the experience with light and warmth. There’s feel and balance, and the notion that you can do anything with it – go neat, or lift ’n’ tuck and then, if the bend’s tight enough (there’s quite a lot of rubber on the road, at 205/45 17), you can go for a proper, full-on, rubber-burning drift. Tee, hee.

But owning an MX-5 isn’t just about being the slide-monkey king of the wet roundabout. There’s real sophistication here, a long-travel suspension that’s so well damped it keeps its cool even when the road starts bouncing like crazy.

On slower roads, there is occasionally a shuddery quality to the ride that makes you think the body is a-quiver, but it’s just suspension movement. Otherwise, this is a brilliant car for wafting. It’s so light and keen, and so right in all sorts of little ways you might not be expecting. For instance, against the fashion, the windscreen has been moved more upright in this generation. It makes it easier to see around the pillars, and also moves the header rail away from your head, which makes the cockpit feel more open. But it’s always entirely balmy – keep the windows up and you’re just caressed by the breeze. This isn’t an Atom-style perfect storm. In fact, a canny new set of mid- level air vents warm those sensitive parts between your belly and your thighs, widening the roadstering season into much cooler days.

Show-offs might want a powered roof, but the MX-5 fights back in the name of simplicity. The top opens with a one-handed flick of a single catch, then a backward shove and down it flops. One more downward push and a catch holds it tidily flat, with no need for a clip-on cover. Five seconds, tops. And all from the driver’s seat. With a bit of practice you can hoick it up without getting out too. I drove through a deluge and can vouch it does everything a roof should, water-wise, though a bit more noise-proofing wouldn’t go amiss – tyre grumble seems to come up from behind you. Still, the optional Bose stereo will see to that. It’s immensely powerful, and alters its equalisation according to whether the roof is up or not.

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So you can cut the driving experience in half and it’ll say Mazda MX-5 right through in big bold letters. Understandably, there was a strong impulse to do the same with the design. When Mazda displayed the Ibuki show car in 2003, the line was: ‘this has nothing to do with the new MX-5, no, no way José, not a bit.’ But now they say it was one of the important steps in getting us used to the idea of the gen-3 roadster. So the Ibuki’s ultra-modern graphic elements, oval theme and emphatic round arches have been morphed onto the traditional soft surfacing of an MX-5. It works well, though if you follow it down the road you could think it was an old car with a set of after-market spangly light clusters – did they have to be that respectful to the dead?

If soft plastic is the short-cut metric by which we classify cabins these days, the MX-5 is bottom of the heap. There are a couple of little elbow patches on the door armrests, about the size of your maths teacher’s. That’s all. Everything else, even the main fascia moulding, is brittle and hollow to the touch, and the pockets and trays are all unlined so when there’s anything in them the car rattles like a nursery. Even so, it fits together immaculately, and the design is a lot crisper than previously. The impression isn’t plush, but neither is it something that popped out of a Christmas cracker. Plus there’s a bit more storage – shoebox-sized gloveboxes behind each seat, for instance – and a boot that’s deeper.

The two-litre engine is new to the roadster, though it’s derived from the one in mainstream Mazdas, but has a variable intake for a stronger mid-range. You can have a 126bhp 1.8 too. 

Suspension is now RX-8 stuff, mostly alloy to cut weight, and there has been a comprehensive effort to shave weight everywhere. Maybe that, as much as cost, is why the interior is so thinly moulded. The fuel tank is lower and further forward, the engine further back, which makes the car usefully more willing to start and finish every turn – think of shortening a dumbell. There are side and head airbags, too, and the bodyshell will look after you better in a crash. The shell is also bigger and stiffer, yet lighter than ever.

So the little Mazda, now free of competition because MG is no more and the MR2 dies without issue this year, is more than ever a good-time, all-the-time car. Daily grind? It’s lively and easy and carefree. Favourite road, ideal weather? Not the wall-of-death exhilaration of a supercar, no, but an accessible, fun ride, testing your skills without troubling the lawman. And putting a smile on your face like the Mariana Trench.

Verdict: Pure roadster fun, and easy to live with too. An antidote to the modern world, but still contemporary.

2.0-litre 4cyl
160bhp, RWD
0-60mph in 7.9secs, max speed 131mph
1,120kg
£19,000