Blame it on having driven a lot of cars (I’m spoiled rotten, I know), but there are very few new cars I get truly excited about.
New Lamborghini? Yawn.
Yet another Koenigsegg hypercar packing a gajillion horsepower? Snore.
In the past few years, the cars that have gotten me all hot under the collar haven’t been sports cars. The BMW i3 and Volkswagen XL1 are, in fact, quite slow, but they are incredibly interesting from a technical standpoint, which explains my excitement.
This makes the new Mazda MX-5 quite unusual, in that it’s the first sports car in a good long while that I’m looking forward to (yes, there was that one glorious day with the Porsche 918 Spyder, but I digress).
But fittingly enough, the new MX-5, according to a colleague who’s already driven it (the lucky sod), it’s not exactly quick, though speed isn’t really the point of the new model, apparently.
So, even though it isn’t fast, I’m still terribly eager to drive it. Here are five reasons why.
1. It’s good looking
Seriously, just look at it. I’m really liking the new crop of Mazdas. They’re almost universally handsome, but the MX-5 is possibly the best execution of the marque’s Kodo design language yet. Oh, those rear haunches!
2. It’s small
I like small cars, so imagine my joy when I found out the new MX-5 was going to be slightly smaller than the already-minuscule original. Hooray.
3. It’s light
Because it’s a small car, and because Mazda have made judicious use of aluminium and sweated the small stuff (like using resin netting instead of metal springs for the seat cushions), it’s some 100kg lighter than the outgoing model. Mazda say it’s targetting a kerb weight of around a tonne, which is nothing short of incredible in this day and age.
4. It’s nimble
Because of points 3 and 4, the little Mazda looks to be razor-sharp in the handling department. According to my lucky colleague, he says the new MX-5 handles just as sweetly as you would imagine. And the chassis setup is on the soft side, which should make it great on B-roads. Who cares if the base model with the 1.5-litre engine only has 130bhp? Power is overrated, anyway.
5. It’s affordable
In an age of sky-high COEs, nothing really is affordable anymore, so please take that above point with a large pinch of salt. Still, for the cash-strapped enthusiast (which describes almost all enthusiasts, really), you’d be hard-pressed to find more thrills for the same amount of money. A Lotus Elise will cost significantly more (and be built significantly worse) and let’s not even talk about a Porsche Cayman…
