My 10 Favorite Cars #8- Mazda Miata (MX-5)

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"But, Seth", you're saying, "the Miata is a girly car."  And that's where you, and the majority of the general public, are dead wrong.  I guarantee you, there are more of these "girl cars" running around racetracks than any other car in the world on any given weekend.  Their smooth, unadorned bodies aging far, far better than their contemporaries with the fake scoops, swoops, and spoilers everywhere.   Light weight and rear-wheel drive make this car one of the very best sports cars available today, if not ever.

There's an old saying, that it's way more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slowly, which is proven true with cars like this.  Perfectly balanced weight distribution, enough power to be rapid without upsetting the handling mid-corner, and classic roadster proportions with the wheels pushed as far apart as possible all conspire to make a modern-classic.  Or is it modern at all?

In fact, Mazda engineers benchmarked classic 60's era British roadsters, and decided that the car should be no more complicated or heavy than safety and emissions legislation dictated.   Therefore, small, light, and simple became the rules of the day, sharing the philosophy with late, great Colin Chapman (founder of Lotus) of "added lightness", or an attention to extremely efficient design and engineering.   They even styled the body to echo the earlier Series I Lotus Elan

I have had the pleasure of driving a Miata, and I can tell you that the design team's philosophy, which translates from Japanese roughly as "car and driver as one" is pretty much met by this remarkable and fun little car.  The passenger compartment is very snug without being cramped, the car feels about half as big as it is, and you get the impression that it actually anticipates what you are going to do before you do it.

Anyone who dismisses the Miata as a "chick car" is doing the rest of us a favor, keeping demand and prices down so that there will always be plenty of Miata goodness for those of us who know better.