"We need cars like the Rocketeer": is an old V6-engined MX-5 the antidote to modern performance?

What you’re looking at here is a little lesson in humility and editing. Because the Rocketeer is far more than an MX-5 with a V6 engine thrown into it. It’s a car built by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts, without the wallet mining that comes with full carbon bodywork and unwarranted exotica.

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood

Yes, Rocketeer does a more expensive full on restomod, but what we’re interested in here is the more prosaic conversion that doesn’t bother with the gilding, and gives you more of the lily. A V6 with 325bhp. Proper suspension. Nicer, lower seats, exhaust and a few other bits. It’s a 5spd manual with a semi-locking diff and RWD. It is, by absolute definition, a car for people who like driving and don’t really care about the pomp of flashiness, or ego. And the cost? About the same as a low miles, secondhand hot hatch.

So what we’re going to do, on this nadir between summer and autumn, is visit the youngest motorsport facility in the UK, and then roadtrip to the oldest. Just to get a feel for what driving really means these days. Our first stop is Ramsgate in Kent and Manston Raceway Park to meet an old friend, Paul Marston. He’s been a stalwart of the UK drag racing scene for more than two decades – if anyone remembers his brutal ‘PT Bruiser’ drag spec Chrysler PT Cruiser, you’ll know who I mean – and taught me to drag race back in the day in a slick-shod Dodge Dart back when I had hair.

Now Paul is passionate about bringing drag racing to the masses, and has commandeered Manston to run ‘No Prep’ and ‘Run What Ya Brung’ strip days – and it only emerged a few months back. A few quid for scrutineering and marshals/medics and the cheapest form of motorsport in the UK, just about. You can turn up in pretty much anything and have a squirt down the 1/8th mile, just to see how fast your car is, or settle a grudge match in safety.

Paul, as ever, looks like a rock star. He’s effortlessly warm, endlessly passionate and interested in anything with an engine. He’s managing Manston just for the hell of it, to take racing from the street to the strip. Yes, it’s basic and windy at Manston, but that’s pretty much the same as the Rocketeer; the fun boiled back to basics, to make it accessible for more people. Also basic and windy.

The Rocketeer is fast but not ridiculous, perky but not violent. You’d think 325bhp would feel overpowered in an MX-5 – especially with a standard clutch and diff – but the car is light and progressive. And energetic. The short throw ’box is a delight, the big, cool metal gearknob giving it a bit more intention. And Manston feels like the kind of place where things begin, the gateway drug of motorsport; a few passes on the strip and suddenly you’re smoking circuits and injecting hillclimbs. But we have to move on.

The Rocketeer is absolutely fine on the motorway. OK, so it wasn’t built for it, and it’s still an old car, but it’s not a screamer, nor is it particularly hard work. And it just slips through traffic. OK, so it’s lower on nice wheels, has some blue brake calipers and slightly shouty dual exit exhausts, but other than the missing foglights (repurposed as intakes), it’s boringly normal. Certainly no more outrageous than 75 per cent of lightly modded Mazdas.

And yet, when you thread it down a country road, you realise how small it is. How narrow, and chuckable, and reliable. You will not be the fastest car on a trackday, nor the most rapid down an unknown road. But what you will be doing, is being involved in every last squirrelly, vital little emotion of the experience.

This isn’t a perfect car, with all the creases starched out of it with electronic painkillers. It still shimmies a little on a bad road, still requires some adjustment if you hit a bump mid-corner going properly fast. But by whichever god you wish to swear by, it’s huge, silly, involving, inspiring fun.

And yet as we said, this car is about the edit, rather than the length of the shopping list. Excuse the manifestation of one’s inner nerd, but it’s all in the detail. And this stock looking little MX-5 is swamped with it. Take one ‘NB’ generation MX-5 (1998 to 2005) and stare deeply into its guppy face. Then you must drive to Rocketeer and hand over your money. Rocketeer will open the bonnet and remove the 1.8-litre four cylinder BP-4W with 140bhp/116lb ft (when new: some horses will have likely been sent to the knacker’s yard by this point) and throw it in some sort of industrial recycling bin.

It’ll then drop in a 3.0-litre V6 AJ30, which is kinda-sorta a Jaguar motor. It was used in the X-Type and XF, even some S-Types, but is based on the Ford Duratec V6 you can find in a Mondeo and... other stuff. But Ford actually bought the design from Porsche, then chucked a Cosworth cylinder head at it, so it’s been regularly bastardised. Mazda itself even had a version of the same engine, so it’s a bit of an all rounder when it comes to provenance.

Plus, it actually weighs several kilos less than the pulled 1.8-litre four. And that’s in an MX-5 that weighs just over a tonne. This is a really Very Important Point. When everything is getting fatter and further into the collateral of weight (bigger brakes, more cooling, more damping and heavier springs), an MX-5 that has more power and less ballast makes all kinds of sense.

To get the power without the use of forced induction, there’s uprated injectors and valve springs, an increased compression ratio, re-bored heads with the block and heads also refaced – the list goes on for a while and gets really involved. It looks spectacular in the engine bay, with a cold air induction kit for each bank of cylinders stretched down into the nose of the little MX-5, foglights disposed of to try and breathe in some airflow. A proper sleeper build.

Extras include an oil cooler system, that Meister R suspension, a Brembo brake kit, a lightly strengthened chassis, rollbar, lowered seat bases (absolutely the go-to mod for MX-5 owners over 5ft 9in), Corbeau seats, a special dial set and some trim bits like the nicer gearknob. Cost is £24,295 plus VAT. Which sounds like a lot to spend on what might well only be a cheap car in the first place, but what you’re getting is way more than the sum of the parts. After a quick scan, you can pick up a nice NB for six or seven grand. Bit of a tidy up, and you’re looking at £36 to £37k for the Rocketeer all in, turnkey.

A few hours, more than 250 miles and a couple of backroad detours later, and we’re in Worcestershire at Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb, first used on 12 August 1905, making it the world’s oldest motorsport venue still held on the original course. It’s the end of the day, and you can feel, almost hear, the history of the place steeped into the rolling Worcestershire hills.

The Rocketeer is in its element, just as it was on the backlanes. Shelsley rewards both the responsive and the bijou, requires precision and confidence. The Rocketeer is small enough to play with oversteer, powerful enough to correct mistakes. It’s grand. And Shelsley is a bit like Manston’s eldest sibling, in attitude if not appearance. Grass roots still flourish here, cheap motorsport for all, the antithesis of the glitz of something like Formula One. It’s lovely to be reminded – for what feels like the eighth time today – that sometimes the most satisfying things aren’t the most expensive or glamourous.

But as the day starts to fail on the last day of summer, it all gets a bit... thoughtful. We’re losing cars like this. European GSR-II rules mandate all the bongs and cameras and electronics for new cars. Getting into a Rocketeer, inserting a key and getting on with things feels like Luddite heaven. The complicated simplicity of clutch and gearbox is being shaved away in the face of automated efficiency, and the MX-5’s curated old school experience feels like home.

Where a standard MX-5 will leave even the most forgiving craving a bit more, the Rocketeer elevates. And it’s not the torquey push of forced induction, or an engine that feels ‘tuned’. It’s just more of the same linear, naturally aspirated flow that you expect. It’s faster by some margin, yes. But not unrecognisable.

Let’s be honest: most modern fast cars are so rapid that they outperform the enjoyment envelope. Third gear is prosecution speed, that little flare of corner exit oversteer a hundred thousand pound gamble you have to be very rich (or daft) to take often. Enjoyment diluted by the potential versus the possibility. The Rocketeer you can thrash like a rental, stretch and enjoy in the meanest of opportunities. At every opportunity. It’s a rare and wonderful thing, easily accessed mental calories that feed the soul, make it fat and happy. We need cars in the world like the Rocketeer, cars that make you feel like summer doesn’t ever have to end – you just have to celebrate the days when the sun shines, and make the most of them.