Mazda MX-5 Miata Review

The MX-5 has survived because Mazda never let it get heavy. The current car weighs under eleven hundred kilograms, makes 181 horsepower from a naturally aspirated 2.0 litre that revs to 7,500, and turns into a corner with an immediacy that no amount of power elsewhere can buy. The roof is a fabric manual item you can drop from the driver's seat at a traffic light with one hand, which sounds trivial and completely changes how often it gets used.

The 2024 update added a genuinely useful asymmetric limited slip differential and better steering calibration. Costs are the quiet superpower. Fuel economy is excellent, insurance is modest, tyres are small and cheap, and Mazda reliability is consistently among the best measured. Resale is famously firm. The compromises are exactly the ones you expect: a boot that takes one soft bag, no glovebox, and not much room if you are tall. None of it matters. It is the purest thing here.