I Bought My Budget Dream Car!

hello everyone and welcome in this video sponsored by eBay Motors I am very stoked to be presenting my new project core right underneath these covers I'm sure you have no idea what it is and we're gonna get into that in just a moment but first I want to say something now although I've been planning this for many months at this point this obviously feels like a very silly time to be like hey wow check out my new toy with all that is going on in the world I'm fortunate enough to be young and healthy and in this position but that's certainly not the case for everyone so as a small way of giving back in these times I personally am going to be donating five thousand dollars split between four different charities helping to fight this coronavirus crisis and I am super happy to say that eBay is going to be fully matching that donation so a big thanks to eBay for matching that donation and of course a massive thank you to all of the medical and essential workers out there helping to do their part now I'm not great with medical advice I'll leave that to the doctors but if you want to talk about cars let's do this so what could possibly be special enough to replace my supercharged Honda s2000 and at first and for many months I started searching for an Acura NSX I absolutely love the way they look they seem like really incredible cars and I've heard they're phenomenal to drive so that seemed like a logical step up from the s2000 so off to eBay Motors I went in search of this NSX again eBay Motors is the sponsor here they have a new app for both buying and selling cars the app makes it super easy to find what you're looking for through various filters and there was a good selection of NSX is available while I was looking to buy one of the things I really appreciate is that they have a vehicle protection plan which covers up to $100,000 for vehicle non-delivery missing title or significant undisclosed defects so that you can bid with confidence you can also sell your car with app and they make it easy to upload the specs of your car simply by taking a photo of your license plate I ended up putting in an offer on a red NSX we negotiated back and forth a bit on the app and then I decided to go check out the car in person so here's where everyone's going to decide that they hate me so I wasn't test drove that NSX I was super excited about it kind of one of those meet your hero moments where I was a little disappointed after the test-drive so it's a good car don't get me wrong this shifting was absolutely incredible I hear people say that NSX's are slow and I was genuinely surprised by how quick it was throughout the RPM range it was very quick fun car however I was disappointed by the steering which I was surprised by and I was also disappointed by the braking and so perhaps you know the car just needed a little bit of love it's thirty years old but it was a fairly low mileage it was a two owner car and it looked to be in really good shape so I was a little disappointed in how the steering and the braking felt so instead of just kind of saying yes this is the car I love based on my perception before after driving and I thought you know what it doesn't make me lineup as gorgeous and incredible of a history that this car has I think it's incredible but it didn't make me line up so I went back to the car that has left me impressed time and time again ever since the first time I drove it I'm sure everyone knows what it is but here we are with this cheesy reveal anyways hopefully I'll do this with some sort of grace ladies and gentlemen the 2016 Mazda mx-5 yes I have bought yet again another underpowered four-cylinder car not to worry it will be getting a supercharger soon and this will be the project car of the channel for the foreseeable future and I'm totally stoked on I absolutely love this thing I imagine there probably aren't too many people that are cross shopping a Miata with an NSX but here we are and you can pick up these club models which have some suspension goodies and the limited sub differential low mileage between 15 and 20 grand all day long so maybe you're thinking what this can't be a dream car and I feel like that's fair to say however I found an interview from 2016 where I was asked hey what's your dream car and my response was an mx-5 a Shelby gt350 and a Jaguar f-type and while I love all three of those two of them are rather bulky and I already have a car that's super fast and super bulky so I wanted something that was trimmed down a bit and so this weighs about 1,400 pounds less than the f-type or the gt350 and what it lacks in outright speed it makes up for in playfulness much of that as a result of its very low weight now when I sold my s2000 I started looking for you know the replacement vehicle and in doing so I realized a big part of why I love the s2000 so much in the first place it's light it's nimble it's playful it has an incredibly cool engine and so one of the things I kind of learned through you know modifying these different cars is that if you want to make the car weigh less you really have two options you can strip out the interior stripout anything that's excessive but then you start to sacrifice the livability and the daily drivability of that vehicle you ruin all your modern amenities and things like that or you can choose to go the very expensive route and leave everything as it is but replace it with lighter materials like carbon fiber titanium things like that so extremely expensive and you get really minimal gains to be honest so it all comes back to the base car and if you can start with a really light base car then you don't have to worry about those weight modifications which are so expensive if you don't want to destroy the daily drivability of that vehicle and that's why I think this is such a great pick because you start with a car that weighs a little over 2,300 pounds it's got modern safety features it's got modern amenities and yet it weighs so little so when you're looking to upgrade the car you really don't have to think about weight at all you can just go towards those performance gains that you really want and so that's part of why one of the first things that I want to do to this vehicle is supercharge it and bring the wheel horsepower up to about 200 but honestly where this engine sits isn't that bad so let's compare it to my s2000 so this is a 2 liter engine and it only makes a hundred fifty five horsepower versus the s2000 which made 240 horsepower now this only revs to 6800 rpm versus the s2000 which revs all the way to 9,000 rpm so looking at those numbers alone this doesn't look all that exciting but if you dive a little deeper which of course we're going to do you can see why it's actually a pretty impressive little engine the white board finds away so this is why the Miata at low speeds is actually curr than the s2000 so it only has 155 horsepower and 148 pound-feet of torque versus the s2000 which has 240 horsepower and 153 pound-feet of torque you can only see the torque is very similar so if you take the me out his weight divide it by its power you get the weight to power ratio 15 pounds per horsepower with 2332 pounds divided by 155 horsepower now if we look at the s2000 engine up and till the Miatas peak power which is at 6,000 rpm we can understand why that is so horsepower is a function of torque multiplied by rpm divided by 5 - 5 - we take 153 torque multiplied that by 6,000 that's the RPM we're trying to analyze divided by five two five two and we get 175 horsepower now this is optimistically high because we're using peak torque and in reality at 6,000 rpm this torque is going to be lower six thousands where the s2000 engine crosses over to VTEC and has a significant jump in torque but it isn't quite there yet at 6,000 rpm so this number in reality is lower if we take this number 175 horsepower and use the s2000 s weight 2810 pounds divided by 175 we get 16 pounds per horsepower so you can see up until the Mazdas peak power at 6,000 rpm it's actually going to be the quicker car has a better power-to-weight ratio it's going to be putting down more torque and once you hit 6,000 rpm in that s2000 that's where it really starts to make powered so that's where it's going to take that advantage and move quicker so you might be thinking well the s2000 would just then use more aggressive gearing and as a result it would be quicker in all of these scenarios but it doesn't the mx-5 actually has more aggressive gearing so in fact at low speeds the mx-5 is the quicker car so the mx-5 has a torque curve that's much more oriented towards daily driving versus the s2000 all of that powers at the very top end which isn't necessarily a bad thing it's an extremely cool engine and I'm not trying to downplay how special the s2000 is because really I think the s2000 is a significantly more special car than this MX but that doesn't change that I feel like this is the better car and so you know maybe you're thinking well you're just saying that because now you own this and not the s2000 but I send the same thing in a comparison about the s2000 in 2016 now the final question and perhaps the most important question which one of these vehicles is the most fun to drive and you know I have a clear pick here I have a clear winner and it is the mx-5 as I mentioned in my mx-5 video best car you can buy for less than $50,000 and I'm still sticking with it I haven't experienced the car under 50 grand it's been more fun than the mx-5 this BRZ is very close behind it though this BRZ has good fun the mx-5 it's the lightest of the group and it's the quickest of the group at low speeds you can't beat that now as much as I would love to be driving the car for this video there is an executive order in my state to quote suspend activities that are not necessary to sustain or protect life and that pretty much encapsulates my entire channel in one sentence so we'll do it for my garage I was able to get a little b-roll in as well as some testing before things closed down so let's talk about what I've already done and what I plan to do with the car first up is the obvious and that is maintenance it's a good idea to change the oil on any used car you've recently purchased so you know it's starting out with fresh oil from the beginning of your ownership shout out and a big thanks to the team at Mobil 1 they're a great partner to the channel again always a good idea to change out fluids when buying a used car I plan on changing the dip else in as well and overall you just want to check the fluids are all at adequate levels as this car only has about 33,000 miles on it many of the fluids are fine to leave alone for now now my obsession with tires is no secret and in my opinion it is the most meaningful difference you can make for the performance and safety of your car so these are the stock Bridgestone soö ones and I swap them out for Bridgestone re 71 ours they're awfully adorable tires 205 over 45 are 17s and you may think wow those are super narrow maybe get wider tires which had me wondering for the cars wait are they really that for example my Tesla Model 3 performance tires are 15% wider but the car weighs 75% more a Shelby GT 350s tires are about 50% wider but the car also weighs over 60% more so for the weight of the car the tires width seems absolutely fine now how much of an improvement do these new tires provide well I ran 362 zero mile per hour runs on the same strip of road and the stock soo ones averaged 126 feet for stopping distance that's not bad it's an average of 0.9 5 G's decelerating and it was about 55 degrees outside and sunny and these tires are from 2016 so I then swap the car over to the re 71 ours and the average from 360 to 0 mile per hour stops on that same strip of road was 112 feet so 14 feet less on average which turns out to be over a full car length and I wouldn't say conditions were ideal for the re 71 ours ambient temperature was about the same but there were absolutely no break in miles put on the tires and it was cloudy instead of sunny so the road was likely a bit cooler either way these had a twelve point four percent improvement in longitudinal grip and I imagine there's also an improvement in lateral grip as well as that's where these tires really shine now if you've seen my video on what's the best car mod you'll know that a 10% improvement in grip can be as meaningful for your lap times as doubling your horsepower so it's an incredible improvement to get 12% more grip out of these tires now as far as the wheels and brakes I plan on leaving these as is I made sure to find one that had the BBS and Brembo package to be clear those Brembo calipers are just on the front the rear brakes stay exactly the same and I love these BBS wheels so forged lightweight wheels and the previous owner was kind enough to get a little curb rash on three out of four of them so I no longer have that stress hanging over me now black is a pretty boring color for sports car so why did I get the car in this and to be honest I feel like all cars should be in fun colors and so the reason why I got this in black is because I'm going to get it wrapped now I believe you know that Mazdas red is a beautiful color and I love their red so why not get that well I already have a red car and I don't like the idea of two of them when I could have more of a variety of colors so I'm probably gonna get this in yellow and I know many of you will probably hate that and say you know you're just trying to copy the s2000 blah blah blah which is fine you know I'll get a kick out of it either way are someone in yellow and with the black arrow kit the side sills the window and you know the mirrors here it actually looks really cool with that black yellow combo which again I loved on the s2000 another reason why I got these wheels on this so I think it looks really cool and that's probably the color I will end up going with if you don't like it that's totally fine you should definitely buy a car in a color that you like anyways if you are getting your car wrapped black is a great color to go with because you know once you pop the hood once you pop the trunk things like that you'll have that black matching whatever the exterior color is black pretty much goes with everything so it'll still look good which is why I went with this color now the 2019 mx-5 and the 2020 are better in pretty much every way so why go with the 2016 well with the 2019 and 2020 engine updates there's a new updated ECU and it seems a lot of aftermarket companies have struggled to have the programming with that updated ECU so for the 2016 and 2018 model years there's plenty of aftermarket support for tuning this engine and so if you do plan on tuning the vehicle the 2016 to 2018 s look pretty great if you're not going to touch it I'd obviously recommend going with the 2019 or 2020 which has more power now I haven't touched on specifications much and there's some neat stuff here so this is a 2 liter inline 4-cylinder and you can see it's pushed way back and so actually the front of that engine sits nearly dead center on the center of these wheels that helps give this car its 5347 front rear weight distribution small bore long stroke and a 13 to 1 compression ratio this is designed to be super efficient and it is when I pick the car up I drove over a hundred miles and I was sitting at 80 miles per hour and this thing was getting 36 mpg so I have no doubt you could actually get about 40 mpg in this thing depending on your highway speed and the transmission is truly beautiful not just because it shifts well not just because the clutch engagement is fantastic but also because of the gearing I always complain about gearing and the Miata has done it right super aggressive gearing first gear ends a little over 30 miles per hour second gear doesn't even make it to 60 miles per hour and that's kind of a silly thing to do from a zero to sixty standpoint so a lot of car companies will make it to their car gets all the way to 60 miles per hour and second gear so they don't have that delayed shift time in their zero to 60 the Miata says nonsense which I absolutely love who cares about the 0-60 time when your actual acceleration that you actually feel will be better and even still Motor Trend tested the 2016 Club at five point eight seconds zero to sixty with two shifts and only 155 horsepower that's pretty solid and the gearing never lets up in fact sixth gear your top gear is where you finally hit a 1 to 1 gear ratio there are no overdrive gears though it is a fairly tall final drive ratio at two point eight six six it is one of the most aggressively geared modern manual transmissions and for that I love it I mean just look at how much fun I'm having to close I want to make a point about cost because I'm sure plenty will say that this thing is for too cheap to be giving the legendary status that I'm trying to imply that it has and make no mistake when you look at the individual components the engine the drivetrain the body shape nothing alone is all that special about this car it doesn't have the visual appeal of a McLaren nor the potency nor the approval of teenagers but the overall package if you can get over the fact that it is a budget sports car this is one of the most well executed machines on the road today and that's why I picked it over in NSX and that's why I'm stoked to have it thank you all so much for watching thank you to eBay Motors for sponsoring the video of course check out the link in the video description and download the eBay Motors app if you guys have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 995,720

Keywords: dream car, new car, buy a car, bought my dream car, acura nsx, supercar, hypercar, engineering explained, used car, mazda mx-5, miata, ford mustang, gt350, jaguar f-type, supercharged, engine, engineering, cars

Id: AEMd4VVJVus

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020