DriveTribeRichard Houlton | DriveTribe
Car No18
‘17 Mazda MX5 RF 2.0 GT
I’d never owned an MX5. My wife had an ‘08 NC for 3 years and it was a car I liked, but never really loved. I’d driven a few NAs and and always really respected them...but the bottom line was also that I just wasn’t a “convertible guy”. I always hoped Mazda would build a coupe!
My BRZ was up for replacement, and my wife had bought an Abarth 124 three months earlier, and I really liked the Abarth. Mazda had also unveiled the RF not long before the Abarth was released, and I loved how it looked. Maybe this was an MX5 I could own?
My wife was working for a chain of car dealers at the time, and she saw the first RF arrive...and called me immediately to take a look. I loved it. So tiny but it looked like a Japanese sports car should.
I immediately arranged a test drive...and their only available car was a soft top...which hadn’t yet benefited from the RF’s revised suspension tune...but I didn’t know that at the time. The first roundabout I threw it into, at a speed that would barely have ruffled my BRZ, scared the hell out of me. It changed direction twice as fast as the BRZ and then lurched onto its outside rear and onto the bumpstop and then felt like it was going to trip over the wheel. It didn’t feel that good if I’m honest. The steering felt a bit light and dumb after the BRZ and it felt like it had very little caster.
Figuring it was fixable, I ordered the car (because I loved everything else about it) and contacted an ND softtop owning friend who laughed and recommended Eibach US spec springs. 20% stiffer than stock but designed to work with standard springs. He also advised getting a wheel alignment that dialled in as much caster as possible to improve the caster effect on the steering. Both were applied before I even took delivery of the car.
As it turns out, “the flop” had already been fixed on the RF but adding 20% stiffness didn’t upset the car much...and it was still pretty soft. The ride was great for a small sports car, the levels of movement (pitch and roll) still slightly alarming after the stiff/flat BRZ, but once I started to get used to it, I realised it was genius. Unlike the BRZ and my wife’s Abarth, this car moved in response to every input. The nose rose under acceleration. Dived under brakes. Turn in and it rolled heavily onto its outside rear but the car dived into corners. In a big heavy car, it would have been a disaster, but the MX5’s lack of mass meant it never felt ungainly. It just felt agile and hyper alert and exciting...even at 40kph driving to the shops! And if speeds rose, and things started to get more serious, if you had confidence to push through the initial “exciting” nervousness, the car always settled securely, never did anything really scary, and had very high limits and could hold impressive corner speeds. The more miles I put on it, and the more pushed it, the more I understood it, and the more I loved it. I finally had a car with the same level of fun and adjustability as my old Prelude.
I love everything about this car. It’s well equipped. Built and finished with nice quality materials (on another level to the 80s Corolla level of finish on the BRZ). Okay, it’s not that practical, but it’s a joy driving it too work in traffic where the 2.0 Skyactiv has lovely torque from 1500 and really requires very few gear changes if you are being lazy. And of course it’s a joy on Sunday morning backroads chasing my friends in their turbo hot hatches and doing a pretty good job sticking with them whilst probably challenging me more than their ridiculously capable hot hatches are challenging them.
It’s a ridiculously good car. It really is. It’s miraculous that Mazda can build a car in 2016 that channels so well what made the original NA great and can do it meeting 21st century requirements for safety and equipment levels. It is the best MX5 ever. Mine is now it’s nearly 3 years old....and I’m thinking about replacing it with another one. And that’s a first for me!