The One And Only

Do you remember what was the first car that you fell in love with? Do you remember with which car you have exclaimed “one day you’ll be mine”? Do you remember which car you had on the wall of your bedroom? I was about 10 and my answer to the above questions was always the same: MX-5! Yes, the small Japanese roadster that has become the best-selling roadster of all time. The MX-5 was beautiful: low, wide, with only two seats, a spider body characterized by those romantic pop-up headlights, veritable diktat for supercars of the 90s! The MX-5 had the great merit to revive the fortunes of spider cars which in those years did not meet wide success. After this very model, everything changed and other car makers went back to look with interest to this kind of car. The recipe for the success of the MX-5 was basically simple: a seductive line, low weight, engine with the right power and the rear wheel drive. Result? Driving pleasure at the highest levels and the sky as a roof! Just the perfect mix of all these elements allowed the small Japanese spider to collect a large and unexpected sales success, able to end up in the Guinness Book of Records! But the commercial success was not the only target accomplished by the Miata, the name by which it was known in America: soon it entered into the hearts of fans who were quickly falling in love with its technical characteristics, its design and its driving pleasure. And I clearly was one of them. I remember the posters in my room and I remember the excitement that struck me the first time I saw it live. It was at that moment that I thought, “it is even better live! Sooner or later I’m gonna buy one”. As mentioned, I was about 10. My love for beautiful sports cars has never faded, in fact it also increased. A lot of cars came in the garage, but the want of having that inimitable Japanese girl has never faded. Until I was able to fulfill the desire to have one of my own! After an extensive research and many road tests, a day in mid-September I met what would become my British Racing Green MX-5: that day it was love at first sight, and today is always exciting to open the garage home and find it in front of me, each time as if for the first time! Since then I have not separated from it and every time I see it and drive it, a smile comes naturally on my face. But why am I writing all these things? Because I realize that the love and emotions for a certain car does not fade. A few days ago, I opened an email and my attention went on this: “European Presentation for the new Mazda MX-5.” Curiosity burned in a second immediately followed by a jump of joy when I read that I was invited to the presentation of the new Mazda ND, an acronym that identifies the fourth series of the MX-5! Needless to say what mix of feelings exploded inside of me in those seconds when I read the mail: curiosity, excitement, joy, not wanting to wait for the month of September when there will be the final unveiling of the new MX-5! Doubled emotion because the new MX-5 seems to have been built with the fixed idea of technicians and engineers to emulate in every way my original MX-5 regarding agility, driving pleasure and design. So the excitement is here, the new MX-5 too, the desire to drive it does not lack one bit, technical characteristics to become again a reference point are here too: after about 25 years it all seems the same and yet everything is so different. I am sure that the poster of the first MX-5 will remain in place in my room as I am sure that certain emotions are not comparable. But the question that runs in my mind is: “Will the new MX-5 satisfy me in driving more than my old one still does?”. As my colleague and friend Alex says in his column “Do we really need to leave in peace our childhood myths?“. Maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know. I just know that I’m dying to find it out live and to drive the new Japanese spider that, unfortunately, has no longer those romantic pop-up headlights and that perhaps does not carries the intrinsic desire to possess that a typical adolescent could feel, saying “a day you will be mine!”. But if you only need two letters and a number for unleashing this whirlwind of emotions, well, this car has probably already entered straight into the heart! So I already know that my MX-5 will always stay in my heart, because when you grow up with a myth (and the MX-5 has been one since 1989), nothing will disappoint you …
PS: Coming this October, on the pages of Auto Class Magazine, after having seen and experienced this emotional test drive, I’ll let you know and tell the emotions of the new Mazda MX-5!
Antonio Iafelice