So, I have always had a soft spot for Japanese sports cars. Not only Skylines, Sylvias, Supras and whatever, but also Civics, Miatas, sporty Kei cars, whatever you could imagine. But sadly, the market for those is pretty poor in my area, so the local newspaper never had anything nice to offer, and so did the local used car dealerships. Last month, a good friend of mine from Merano, South Tyrol, Italia, sent me a link to a mobile.de offer of a 1996 Mazda Miata being sold by a guy from Bolzano, just a few kilometres away from him. He told me the car seemed to be in great condition and that I should really consider buying it. The guy who sold it wanted to have V$5.000 for it, but it looked too damn good. It had also run only about 156.000 km. I asked my mate to go and check the car out for me (he's actually driving an E30 BMW, so he could easily get there) and he reported back that there are hardly and downsides to the car. So I got in touch with the goy from Bolzano and within a week, we made an appointment. I took a friend from my town with me (to drive his Civic back, as I would have to take the MX-5), and we went to Bolzano. A lovely city. We met the guy right outside of town, seemed to be around 40 years old, really nice person. I got to take the car for a test drive, and I was amazed. It doesn't have an LSD, but it still drives really well and it's absolute fun. I think I fell in love with the car during that first drive.
I also got to know some downsides and slurs to it. I knew that the car has been rear-ended by a Golf Mk 4 in 2015, that's why it has a new trunk and rear bumper, taken from a US model someone in Italy was gutting. Sadly, the rear license plate is mounted to the rear bumper now because of the US trunk and they drilled holes into the bumper to fit it there.
The car also runs new wheels, which are replicas of MazdaSpeed MS01-LMs, but since they're only replicas and I don't find them that pretty anyways, they are most likely going to be exchanged soon. The rest of the car was genuinely fine, except for some minor traces of usage in the interior, but those are nothing unusual after 20 years of existence.
I will also get rid of the tan roof, as it just doesn't look good. I am looking to get a black soft top, but they're pretty rare.
The car came with a NA8C engine from stock, and it's been that way since the guy bought it. He only had to replace some parts like the fuel pump and the battery (replaced the stock one with a Supercell one, for efficiency), but it's all listed in the service booklet. He even took it to a Mazda workshop once a year!
The only other thing he changed are the brakes. And this is the part that I really love about this whole thing. He bought a new brake system from Mazda, taken from an RX-7 FD, simply because he wanted his son to be safer when driving his car.
After the test drive, we discussed the price and he agreed to sell it to me for V$4.500, because he saw how excited I was about it. And for a few hours, I was the happiest dude in the world. I still am, kind of.
Next task was to get the car to its new home. And boy, was that a trip. I have to admit, 800 km in this car are not the best thing you could imagine. There are a lot of noises when driving more than 70 km/h and the seats are not as comfortable after a few hours. We left the Italian plates on to avoid police trouble and took it for a spin as soon as we reached home. My pal also had a blast driving it, but I didn't let him take the wheel for long, as my hype was just too real. We took some pictures along the road before finally taking it to my dad's garage.
