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Basic instinct
Mazda has turned its back on the crazy world of super-electronic-gizmo roadsters with its new MX-5. Good job
How high the stakes? When you have a product so marrow-deep involved in your entire corporate and brand image as the MX-5 is with Mazda, then to change it every five or six years is like wandering around the foundations of your house in a JCB with only a vague notion of how to drive.
Chances are something's going to get broken - and it might be something vital.
Which is why the MX-5 gets a place in the Top Gear Awards. Why the new MX-5 is such an achievement.
It's not what Mazda added that made this reinvention so successful, but the driver 'aids' that it had at its disposal... and then left on the shelf. It's about something that owners of classic cars know plenty about. It's about knowing when to keep it simple.
See, for a while now it's been technology that holds the popularity contest key. The escalation of silicon, necessitated by the growing size and
complexity of modern cars, creatively marketeered into a selling point.
'It's got barely enough power, a chassis that can handle twice as much and a manual hood. We love it'
We are lining up to pay extra for stuff they have had to engineer-in as performance and safety collateral has risen.
Gadgets and gizmos that help hypnotise the audience like cyborg will-o'-the-wisps, floating into the consciousness only long enough to entrance headline writers.
The MX-5, even in 2005, pares back that driving experience; rewinds the arms race to where we're not remote-bombing with a laser-guided nuke of an AMG Merc or BMW M-Car, but back to scrapping with pointy sticks. And it's more visceral, more fun.
It's got barely enough power, a chassis that can handle twice as much and a manual hood. But we love it.
At Top Gear we try to appreciate what makes good cars great, and why that is, even if they have some pretty hefty flaws. We don't always get it right.
Mazda, on the other hand, seems to have the knack of hitting the spot time and time again with the MX-5. Congratulations to Top Gear's Roadster of the Year 2005.
Tom Ford
Read Mazda MX-5 Car Review
Mazda MX-5 road tests
Mazda MX-5 RC 2.0i Sport with BOSE - September 29, 2006
Mazda MX-5 1.8 - January 4, 2006
Mazda MX-5 - July 22, 2005
Mazda MX-5 1.8i Sport - June 1, 2001
Mazda MX-5 - August 1, 1999
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