2019 Mazda MX-5 30th Anniversary Review - The Perfect Summer Car? (Porsche Boxster Alternative no.2)

[Music] wow [Music] hello everybody after a false start in march and a thoroughly miserable may the sun is finally out here in britain and so it's convertible time and to celebrate i am starting a new sort of playlist that i'm calling porsche boxster alternatives and the majority of cars in this playlist are ones which originally cost quite a bit more than a boxster but have now depreciated to a point where they are a viable alternative today's car is bucking that trend though because this is a car which you could buy now brand spanking new for less than the price of many used boxsters what are we in well that most humble of sports cars the mazda mx-5 specifically a 2019 30th anniversary now i know you can't actually buy a 30th anniversary anymore but you can pick one up very lightly used and the current mx-5 that's on sale now is more or less exactly the same and that's amazing to think because although this is a car you can walk into a showroom and order factory fresh it really doesn't feel like it and i don't mean that in a bad way at all recently i've driven quite a lot of new cars and i found so many things that consistently annoy me in every single one this car is proof that you don't really need to go back that far in time to find cars which just did things a little bit better what do i mean well yes this car does have a little screen stuck here up on the dash but it's operated by a physical dial down here volume heat air all these things they have proper easy to use easy to find very tactile dials meaning you don't need to manipulate any touch screens to just do simple tasks you even have real gauges down here well two of them and one little digital display mascara has a gauge next to it and this is a system that works absolutely fine it's the little things too like the fact that this car's owner my friend michael's brother has turned off lane keep assist and when you get in the car it stays off modern cars it turns itself back on every time so you have to dig through five or six menus to try and get it off every time you set off and that's just infuriating the steering wheel has precisely the right number of controls on it no more no less and you won't even find a sport mode in this car it is refreshingly old school so what really is this car and what's special about the 30th anniversary edition i have driven a fourth generation what they call the nd mx-5 before but it was actually in the really really early days of the channel and i've been desperate to get back in one ever since the biggest change to the mx-5 since our last drove one has been in the engine department now it's always been a somewhat old-school power plant four cylinders no turbochargers no superchargers that's it and originally it produced a rather disappointing 160 horsepower in 2018 this got upgraded to a much more suitable 180 horsepower and of course this being a japanese sports car if you want more out of it there are a whole host of ways that you can do that but i've got to say if you're the sort of person that would look at a car like this and think oh 180 horsepower how could that ever be enough well i can tell you right now this car feels really quite sprightly okay maybe not quite as quick as my s2000 but i really do mean it's a subtle difference it's not night and day at all now why is that there's a 60 horsepower difference between the two of them first off i don't think honda's numbers are anywhere near as accurate as mazda's this car also has a really good spread of torque throughout the rev range and it's lighter a lot lighter mazda's claimed weight for this generation of mx-5 is just 1030 kilos that's only 100 kilos more than a lotus elise now i've cross-referenced this with a couple of sites that i use and mazda's claims are reasonably accurate real world with fuel in it this car is only about 1060 kilos and that means it's 200 kilos lighter than the s2000 no wonder it feels quite pokey i expect one of the ways they manage to keep the weight down is by making the car pretty small in fact if you're any taller than about six foot do check your fit in one of these because it's not a big car even modestly sized drivers may feel somewhat cramped in this cockpit clearly the team at mazda that developed this car were all built like jockeys whips however if you can see past that there is a huge amount to like about this car driving position absolutely spot on pedals reasonably close together but not so much so you can't drive in fairly ordinary footwear visibility superb obviously quite a bit better with the roof down that roof itself by the way just one of the best in the business this is the manual roof you could also get the retractable fastback if you want a nice electric folding hardtop jobby and that doesn't even add actually that much more weight either this one though you come to a stop click a button drag it up it's done in a matter of seconds a brilliant piece of design really quite superb the 30th anniversary edition of the car is very easy to spot mostly because of this very leery racing orange paint work it was built as you might have imagined to celebrate the car's 30th anniversary and they made about 3 000 of them in fact it even has a numbered plaque on the side which is not something i would have expected to see that does make me chuckle because they apparently did make a few more than 3 000 because the american market really did like them so paintwork aside you also get these very nice recaro seats which are much more supportive than the standard items mixture of leather alcantara and contrast orange stitching in here that makes it feel like an actually reasonably up-market cabin all right mercedes-sl it isn't but it's a nice place to be everything kind of feels solid and decent and i like it you also get very nice raised alloy wheels forged items i should point out and there's a few other extras too that i can't really remember this is based on the top line car of the time which i think was the gt sport or whatever so you you get things like the limited slip different the bag heated seats all that kind of covering sat nav that sort of stuff gearbox in here is a six-speed manual and in the mazda tradition it is absolutely wonderful could be best described as snickety these stalks here behind the wheel fall exactly in place and the whole thing clearly has been thought through very well by some people that really care about their cars on a run you'll even get over 40 to the gallon which is incredible and this engine really is proof that the whole turbo charging thing wasn't always a great idea mazda in fact have been very resistant towards turbo charging or downsize or anything like that as a company instead doing what they call right sizing and i have to say i think it's a very very sensible approach and because the way regulations are changing i think in the next few years we're going to see a lot of companies really backtracking on the whole downsizing and reducing cylinder count thing i think engines are going to get bigger once again that's that's true honestly emissions or eggs are going to make engines bigger i'm not making it up if you did want to buy one of these you're looking at about 25 000 pounds for the 30th anniversary edition if you're happy to stay with a regular gt sport or whatever with this later engine you're looking at just over twenty thousand pounds and if you wanted to buy a brand spanking new mx5 you'd be paying about 32 grand if you ticked every single option box that you could that's before you got any discount on the car meaning this is a lot cheaper than a new boxster it's about real world 15 to 20 000 pounds less than any boxster you'd ever actually buy insurance is cheap parts are easy to get lots of mods you can do there is a heck of a lot on paper to really like about this car but how does it fare on a road more accurately how does it fare on exactly the kind of road this car is supposed to be brilliant at but let's find out [Applause] [Applause] it is worth pointing out there are a couple of modifications to this car but both are official mazda items it has some eye back lowering springs on it so it's got a slightly more aggressive stance and it's got the official mazda sporty exhaust that sounds all right it's not a brilliant noise but neither is it artificial and synthetic like so many others that you'll find now i actually really really quite like it the ride is not fabulous though it always has just a bit of an edge of jitteriness about it and that that really surprises me an mx-5 traditionally has always been a car that that rode superbly well i'd say my s2000 now rides a little bit better but it's got some very tasty suspension bits on it is far from standard however front end response really good grip levels very high engine wonderful no it hasn't got masses of firepower but it's got enough for me to have a really good time on a road like this the gearbox is an absolutely fabulous partner for it heel and toe of course very easy it won't auto blip for you like i said there's no sport mode it's just you the car and the road this is this is pretty pure driving steering feel also historically a mazda strong point isn't actually brilliant in the mx-5 it's very good it's extremely direct very accurate and you do get a little bit of feedback through it it's not a totally dead helm but it's not quite alive as you'll find in the really early cars or even in fact in the the mark three that i drove i'd say that has some of the best steering of any car that i've driven it's definitely far from bad though so please don't think of it as a major criticism of the car it's more an observation once you start to press on the car does become just a little bit more compliant but it never quite flows this road in the way that i would really like it to that's a shame actually but i'm sure something that is definitely solvable storage space is also another area where the mx-5 isn't quite as good as you might hope the boot is all right compared to say a jaguar f type converter but i think it's better than that but it's not quite as capacious as the s2000 i was a bit surprised actually when i opened it up and i thought oh right i was expecting a bit more in there but um no the wheel arches intrude quite a bit into it because the whole car is really very compact and uh so that means you've got enough in there for a good weekend away but any more than that and you would struggle if i would put all of my camera kit in there say i i think i'd have an issue because getting my tripod bag in which is pretty long not so easy really is a very relaxing car though this i do wish it just wouldn't be quite so jittery that is a real surprise you see around town it's just bouncing a little bit how much that's the lowered ibex i couldn't say it's far from uncomfortable like please don't think of it as like oh my god this is a really horrible uncomfortable bouncy car and not at all it's just not quite as compliant as i thought it was going to be you have rear parking sensors turning circle is pretty good and when you don't want to make noise it's really quiet very peaceful love the view out that bonnet looks sensational i think the color actually really suits the car too i wasn't so sure when it was released but no i've having seen it in the flesh now i really do like it brakes really very good i like those oh i think you get painted calipers part of the 30th anniversary thing as well they're orange of course and they work really nicely again if you think they're not quite up to snuff you have a million different options to upgrade those too so can you really compare one of these with a boxster yeah i i think you can no this doesn't have anywhere near the firepower of the current boxster or in fact any boxster porsche have never made a boxster with less than 200 horsepower a mazda to my knowledge have never made an official mx5 with any more than this about 180 yes the weight differential will offset things so compared to say an old 986 this is probably sort of just about right but compared to any of the modern stuff not so great however the current entry-level boxster has one of my least favorite engines in the world the little two-liter turbocharged four is horrible it doesn't sound good it isn't very quick and it's very very laggy really not a sports car engine at all whereas this very much is feels like it's got usable pull all the way from about 2000 rpm to seven and a half absolutely fantastic you do get into a groove with it pretty quick perfectly sized for these roads very agile a boxster is definitely faster certainly a modern box though when you're on it i'm not even going to try and argue that but would you have any more fun in it no in fact i think you'd have a lot more fun in this because you can really ring its neck the steering in this is better than in the box stuff for sure the cabin doesn't even feel that down market compared to an entry-level boxster without options on it and yeah okay people generally come in two types when it comes to the mx-5 either they'll go oh an mx-5 or they go uh an mx-5 and honestly if during the latter category yeah sure go buy your porsche whatever fine great i love porsches they're great and awesome and all that jazz but i really like this too you know it's a lot of fun and at the end of the day it's a convertible that's what it's for would i be enjoying it so much if it was the middle of winter and i was trying to lug stuff from a to b no probably not but that's not what this car is about this car's all about days like today the tricky one is if you'd have one of these over a 987 boxster because you see that's a very different car and in many ways far superior to the current porsches i'm not sure i'm genuinely really i'm not sure whether i would i think my instinct would be to go for the porsche however it's going to cost you quite a bit more to run more and fuel more in servicing more in parts when it breaks and it it probably will break and the mx-5 probably won't and if you're looking in early 987 you're going to have all these engine horror stories hanging over you regardless of how much you actually should or shouldn't be worried about them and so if what you want is just worry-free motoring for the summer the mx-5 is an absolutely excellent choice i'm in fact even gonna break one of my own rules which is normally the minute i finish my review i take it straight back to its owner whereas i've got this car for the whole day and you know what i'm gonna enjoy it a little bit more i do like these seats she'll get around to bend all right teddy that much that engine though what a star do not turn your nose up at 180 horsepower really don't i love this little thing so big thank you to michael and his brother for lending it to me thanks to all of you for watching what else would you consider as a viable porsche boxster alternative you got a lot of different price points there and a lot of options so let me know in the comments down below please hit the like button if you've enjoyed today's video and we'll see you for the next one bye [Music] you

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 45,522

Rating: 4.9616308 out of 5

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars, Mazda MX-5, MX5 30th, 30th Anniversary MX5, Mazda MX5 30th Anniversary Review, MX5 vs Boxster, ND MX5, ND vs NC MX5

Id: s8YsRhZiu8A

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021