$40,000 Mazda MX-5 vs $5,000 MX-5 // 30th Anniversary Meets NA Miata

[Music] [Music] you're watching throttle house I'm Thomas and I'm James and the question today is should you buy a new Miata or an old one we're gonna have some fun answering it so here it is the celebration of 30 years of top-down glory this one enjoys the new 181 horsepower higher revving engine and has all the fancy options ticked like the Brembo brakes and Recaro seats the orange you see here is the 30th anniversary special racing Orange which according to Mazda represents sunrise and anticipation which just sounds like a poetic version of Morning Glory as it is a special we rewarded with some fancy tidbits that Thomas and I will cover in a minute for now all you need to know is that it's the most expensive me RT you can buy with the soft top we're testing today coming in at forty four thousand two hundred Canadian and the RF is forty-seven thousand two hundred that's a lot of dollar bills for a car that you can fit in your pocket and yet all 3,000 of them have already been sold and the reason we get to celebrate 30 years of Miata is thanks to this the first generation lovingly known by its chassis code and and if you don't want to spend 40k on a new Miata you can certainly try to pick up one of these which range anywhere from a few grand all the way up to near 13,000 this one has rolled righted of Mazda Canada's garage and into our hands for the week and it is a very clean example it's a 1990 and it's very basic no airbags and a hundred pound feet of torque but that doesn't matter because it is a beautiful five-speed transmission and a whole lot of open sky in fact it's really no more or less practical than the new one okay the soft top might be a little bit harder to close with one hand but it actually has more trunk space however today we are going to explore these two to see just how far one of our favorite cars has come [Music] if you're new to throttle house we do car reviews track tests and quite a lot of messing around so subscribe and hit the bells the first and original n/a Miata is it fast no it's got 160 horsepower from a 1.6 liter four-cylinder is it a button-down race car no not even a little bit it leans all over the place but is it fun what we get 30th anniversary and D Miata we go now this has 76 more horsepower than the one Thomas is it so if I downshift into second gear and put my foot down now I don't do that but it does it does move or pound-feet of torque and it rips out to seven and a half thousand rpm and it's a good thing you can rev out to that too because if you want to experience the extra horsepower that's where you feel it you don't really feel the difference lower down in the rev range I'm sure many of you know that nowadays we have electronic throttle bodies that means the little butterfly flap that lets air into the engine is controlled by wire this one has a cable connecting my right foot to that throttle body so when I lift the throttle to downshift like that it is immediate there is exactly zero throttle lag so the original idea for the Mazda mx-5 was a British style roadster engine in the front rear-wheel drive top down except it was gonna be built in Japan so it would actually work now a guy named Bob Hall was the one that came up with the idea he was actually an automotive journalist at the time and he started working for Mazda building a pickup truck but then his boss konnichi Yamamoto approached him and said why don't you make your idea happen but you can only work on it before work at lunch and after work which he did for years until it became an official project it was meant to be as light and as simple as possible you know what the recipe worked then and it works just as brilliantly today most importantly it's not just the manual gearbox and the high revving and the naturally aspirated that makes this car amazing it's how playful it is in the corners and the balance and that playfulness and balance isn't just on account of the fact that this has a 50/50 weight distribution it's because the car is so light master have applied grand strategy that is wherever they could save weight they did so instead of using materials like steel they've used more expensive ones like aluminium and magnesium even the bolts on the dynamic dampers are recast so they can be that little bit lighter so that means that even though the new Miata meets modern safety standards it's only about 200 pounds heavier than the one from 30 years ago and that lightness gives you confidence if you want to be a bit naughty you can do it in a reasonably safe way the car communicates with you and you know you limit its telepathic I wants the car like to drive in the corners it's curiata it's perfectly balanced it over steers a little bit on corner entry the whole thing leans and it dips and it dives over the bumps you feel small with the car you feel like you're this little item on the road the whole world around you every input you give it every move you make as a driver has a reaction in the car that just makes it wicked fun at any speed this car doesn't have traction control no fancy assistants no aids just you four wheels and a manual transmission which by the way is as good as the last time I remember driving one of these absolute rifle bolt-action because the the actual selector goes directly into the transmission right here the second you get into the corners the whole car comes alive you get to play with the rear it's probably the most rear play i'll get this year it feels like it wants to oversteer in a way a true sports car should and I have these six years and this amazing short shifter to play with it's helped in part by the fact that you need to wring out every last little rpm of the engine to really get the power out of it so you're just going flat out all the time everywhere and you know people drive by you the other way and they and they look at you and they know that that guy's not going anywhere he's just out for a drive they might also think that he's a hairdresser I mean if they looked at me they wouldn't think that Thomas is probably waxing lyrical about the purity of an enemy otter but I can tell you now I've driven a lot of new cars this year and this is right up there with an 86 and a 370 said and it has a magic you know we were recently in an Audi a8 and we said that getting in that car reduces stress because of how luxurious it is this does it because of how fun it is it is a pure toy and the fact that this joy is accessible in a new car in 2019 there's something to be very very happy about that's the beauty about owning and driving and living with a Miata is that it genuinely just represents the concept of not caring what other people think it's a selfish activity driving a Miata it just means that you're light-hearted you want to have fun you don't take things too seriously as a car journalist or someone who claims to be one I have to talk my car off to pick up some of the most amazing cars on the market and the fact that I'm able to get back into my Miata after I've done that means that I never get upset about getting out of those cars it's like pushing a reset button on fun all right let's go talk about the styling best day ever the best who's so good all right 30th anniversary give me some stuff what do we got Racing orange face everything's racing Orange Brembo brakes are orange yeah the missins breaks in the back to orange it looks incredible it's not the color I would pick personally yeah but I'd still think it looks really good we've got the raised wheels which are designed match to the cup car and they say 30th anniversary on them they do we have a badge here for 30th anniversary what number are we we are number 816 hundred and eighty-five sixteen hundred and eighty-five yeah I still think it falls slightly short of what it needs to be there's a few months I would do and have done on my own one this needs to come down one inch the exhaust isn't quite you know sports car you just used your trump card you even got you and got anything else right now obviously those are amazed it's so good and this Hut and then it has the smiley face it has a smiley face so happy and this is I love this color this is seaman blue no it's it's mariner blue yeah that's right mariner blue marin assume so anyway it's very beautifully a roadster amazing condition of proportion the condition of those cars hilarious like it is it might as well just come off the production line it doesn't have rollover protection like yours does so like instant yeah in an accident but that's okay because most people mod these and put a roll bar on them more importantly modding if I was going to mod one of these this particular one I wouldn't cause it's so clean I keep it but if I was will be the first thing that you do I would I would move the ice pace the wheels yes exactly because they are see so far I don't think it needs to be done on this people say it does but I don't think it's as bad it could be a little bit lower but this is definitely I can't get over how nice the birds like why didn't they make so this body style look amazing in like a gloss intense blight neo light metallic blue do I mean yeah I do anyway it should check out the interiors because I want to compare where we've come from and where we're going yeah got an idea okay this is the simplest of the simplest of the simple and for that reason it's perfect I love it right like these HVAC controls are big that's all they are there are controls that is a better radio it's funny it says anti-theft system there but what where it should say is is here yeah exactly anyway I just love how incredibly simple everything is in here also you can get the coolest aftermarket stuff for these amazing like you can get all these panels down as a company that does some really good work of Interior wants roll to the other day it was like full steampunk actually there's a company called rev limiter that does a really cool custom gauges like the Doge like such revs so fast mod revs Wow yeah exactly it's it's so cool what you can do with these cars you know the driving position is hilarious like the steering wheel is at my knees I can't do anything about that but it doesn't matter you just enjoy being it also check out my mirrors this is how I adjust them and you put up your window James it's okay okay but let's go see what this looks like thirty years later all right well those dolls are heavier there but yeah okay oh this is so nice yeah so this is 30th anniversary stuff so we have Alcantara standard here we got orange stitching orange in the air vents orange lining the seats orange stitching here on stitching orange stitching in the steering wheel it's like orange you glad you brought the like this Alcantara it like it goes all the way down it really makes our market people have converted their own ones to this you can buy this stuff a rillette for it and put it in that's obviously it's for nicer when it comes to stuff telescoping wheel ah see it took them how many years 28 years too many years to make that happen yeah but the rest of this is is fine we've reviewed this interior yeah it's still missing things like we haven't got adaptive cruise control here yeah the infotainment I don't like don't like you can't use it as a touchscreen it has car play now it does have carpet you can't retroactively you fit that to the other seats that's pretty cool yeah I mean otherwise in terms of interior space it's not that much different no it's not it's more these are the Recaros which are actually pretty nice yeah and we got the year start the phone calls coming through here yeah that's good but honestly they've kept the me Artemis of this you mean no practicality no glove compartment yeah yeah awful passenger space sorry I'm hit but you're 6 foot or taller you can't fit in it yes kept that yeah yeah otherwise everything falls to hand it exactly basically the exact same place it feels like a roadster and that's nice Forester had they haven't they sir they haven't tampered with anything no it's just it is still very much all right the nd obviously you've seen me drive this car before on throttle house so I'm no stranger to it but I've never just got out of the first generation and into the most recent one and guess what these cars are not that different yes obviously I'm in a more modern interior but in terms of my connection to the road in the inputs I give the car and the weight of the car reacts this brand new 30 years later nd doesn't feel that much different any Miata oh what a joy little bit of kale shake more so than the nd but then you go give this some credit it's just a little bit older but it immediately the bones of it feel so similar I've got the pop-up headlights down right now so that I can be prepared to say hello to someone in a Miata if I need to which is the most important part of this car I can feel the similarities in the wheelbase in the way that the chassis reacts the steering inputs this is as pure a Miata as ever I've owned an NC generation that's the previous generation to this one and it has a bad reputation of being that the fat cousin and while it it's not as bad as everyone says it does feel heavier than this but I've never driven the NA and the nd right back to back this just feels it feels exactly like I would hope a modern version of that car that James's in would the power does not feel that disadvantaged compared to the NVE honestly it might be 76 horsepower of harm but they still got naturally aspirated delivery brings the exact same feeling to you turning in the stirring fills okay I'm surprised it's hydraulic nor electric like the nd it doesn't actually feel that much better but that balance and the way the car moves it's all Miata if I'm gonna get picky with the differences yeah this has more power obviously it has a higher redline - it's a little more fun to bring it out and the brakes are much more boosted but honestly this is as good a Miata as ever and I'm so happy about that which one of these would I buy I don't know I said I would I'm more of like a buy the old car and keep it going myself kind of guy so I probably buy the NA but I mean in terms of modern safety standards and some comfort amenities and actual infotainment it's not a radio this obviously has that if you want the new one buy the new one you want the old one by the old one in conclusion then this is still one of the most fun cars on the road it's small it's light the roof goes down and whether you get this one or the newer one it's one of the most fun vehicles and communities you can be a part of on the road today because the nd captures the heart and soul of this so impressively and brings more comfort and most of the modern gadgets you would want from a car today the nd would be my choice and for the first time on throttle house I'm able to say that I voted with my wallet because that is the car that I currently own we actually asked you on instagram at the throttle house follow us there which one you would take between these two and you said the nd but I implore you get along with each other because no matter what you have na NB ncnd you all own one of the best and purest accessible sports cars ever made

Channel: Throttle House

Views: 1,251,205

Keywords: 2019 Mazda MX-5, 2019 Mazda MX-5 30th Anniversary, 2019 Mazda Miata, 2019 Mazda Miata 30th Anniversary, 2019 ND Miata, Mazda MX-5, 2019 ND Miata 30th Anniversary Edition, 1990 NA MIata, New miata vs Old Miata, used miata vs new miata, buying a used miata, used NA Miata, used Mazda MX-5, Mazda MX-5 Battle, Mazda Miata Drift, Hairdresser Car, Cheap Convertible car, Miata common issues, NA Miata Mariner Blue, NA Miata Exhaust, 2019 ND MX-5 Review, 1989 MX-5 Miata Review

Id: k0qppUHN2Uc

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ringolio]

Dangerous drinking game: drink whenever someone says 'fun' in a Miata review

[u/ronpaulfan69]

@ 7:04: "It's probably the most rear play I'll get this year"

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[u/DanyDies4Lightbrnger]

Ive had an NA and an NB in my life time. loved them. Great track cars. Definitely momentum cars. But you can't beat the value. A full set of tires ~$300 mounted and balanced

You can get a good NA/NB for ~5k and sell it for about the same years later.

I'll probably buy another one

[u/SmellsLikeTeenPetrol]

Never understood the preference of NA miatas over NB Miatas. Sure it's slightly heavier and you don't get pop-up headlights, but in return you get variable valve timing, 12 extra hp, a nicer interior, a newer model year, and plenty of other features, and they aren't as likely to be super rusty.

[u/ProtonXXXX]

Left Miata looks like an excited cat

Right Miata looks like he’s just caught his mother having sex with Hitler

[u/[deleted]]

New one is all like rarrgh I'm gonna eat you and the old one is like hey I'm so happy!

[u/Matux_020]

They're so happy to see each other!

[u/ayeitskoo]

40k for a Miata..........

[u/IdeaPump]

Damn I love Mariner Blue