Yesterday I woke up and drove my Volvo C30 150 miles south to trade it for the 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata Club at Soul Red with the Brembo / BBS package. In English, I traded a car for what many consider a tent for people without children.

Taking Miata instead of Toyota Camry or even a hot hatch, I vote with my wallet – to breathe life into a small car market. Besides Miata / Fiat, the world is my oyster, if I want to choose only two of the following: small, light, with rear-wheel drive, new, inexpensive, with a convertible top, no complaints, three pedals. So what happened?

First, let’s bench race the Mazda Miata.

Mazda is a fairly young company in some respects. After the Mazda was sold from Ford, it stays in a place like BMW in the late 1960s: not much money, something a little less than a bomb-protected reputation, and some relatively affordable cars that offer the driver. more than any of the leaders in the segment. The Mazda style was on the amazing side of the pilot.

On paper, Club equipment is equipped with a 6-speed manual gearbox, Bilstein shock absorbers and a limited slip differential. 60 mph occurs in less than six seconds, and top speed is less than most generalists. Mazda was obsessed with saving on weight, and this is part of what makes this car so special in today’s safety market, as well as emission standards and expected equipment levels. £ 2,300 is virtually inaccessible statistics for new cars available today in the United States.

I’m making this sacrifice for science.

When I do not shoot or write about cars, I work in the office. I live in a sparsely populated area; my 20 mile trip to work involves a change in height with many low speed S-curves. The culture of small cars flourishes here and hosts the largest British automobile event on the continent. The State Transport Agency maintains publicly available interactive maps that track the quality of the road surface, the last time it was cleaned of garbage, and if there is even a drop of snow, where each state plow is located.

All of the above is true, but there’s a snag: I’m living the same place I’ve lived and driven daily for over a decade: Vermont.

By the way, I am an avid skier, tourist and photographer. Now each cell is checked – landing me in rugged territory. Over the next year, I will put on this car, collecting data about joys, money costs and sacrifices, to advise you, reader, about the dung of the glitter and idiocy that happens to the year-round Miata driver in a rusty belt. ,

One day in, what’s it like?

This is an impulse machine that, like ‘Subota, is not tuned out of the box to tear your face in the corners – instead, it should bring a smile to your face. Which does it. Given the noise of the wind, 50 mph feels like a million, and the exhaust note and intake noise really satisfy in several ways. The car feels a little faster than it actually is – something that many modern road enthusiast cars fail. I think and feel a little more in the corners that my C30 would make me snore at the same speed. I no longer feel like a passenger.

Yesterday brought endless sunshine and and 85 degrees, and today, the roads are flooding—still, I’m pretty compelled by this experiment. I’ll let you know how it goes.

-Jack Wilson

QuickSnap Auto Parts