Mazda MX-5 Review // Andrea learns to drive stick.

so as you can see zach has really brought me out to the middle of nowhere and i'm not sure if you noticed on the way out here there's something unique about this car yeah it's manual and i don't drive manual and i have to drive this miata today so today is like trial by far so i brought you out here to sort of a rural setting so it's going to be easy let's hope let's hope it's going to be easy i'm a little bit nervous but i'm all for it and the thing is it could be a marriage breaker but we're going to find out so let's get at it this video is brought to you by carcass canada get the dealer's cost list of rebates plus discounted interest rates use the promo code motormouth to become an expert member and get extra searches the link is in the description below okay andrea for demonstration purposes this is how easy it is to get the soft top down i know it's so easy one hand and they kept it light and the thing is they sell two versions of this car this is the classic convertible and then they have what's called the rf retractable fastback i don't think that looks good i like this car that's why i had the choice which one do you want i want the classic i like the soft top as well and i like the idea that they've given it a lot of thought to make sure that it was lightweight to keep the car weight down as well i've been to many mx fiber miata programs and they call it gram management they go through every single piece in the car and reduce as much weight as they can and and when you do that you get a lightweight fun to drive car it's interesting uh when when subaru and toyota brought out the toyota 86 and the brz or brz everybody was like oh it's this fun lightweight little car well there always has been one it's called the mx-5 yeah this car is the best-selling two-seater sports car in all of history that's impressive yeah and there's a lot of heavy hitters in there there's mgbs and triumphs and all those classic english roadsters it's actually a lot like the 1950s and 60s cars that you're talking about and they say that or frequently called the spiritual successor of these cars how about that i love when you talk dirty like that all right so so last year mazda made a big change to this car they added 17 more power now it was a great handling car and a lot of fun to drive but when you add more power it's just going to make it better so it's now up to 181 horsepower that's great isn't it 151 pound foot of torque you can feel the power in it it's very agile you haven't driven it yet i'll have my moment you can still feel a car without driving it yeah here's the thing um i've driven um i think this is the fourth video i've done on this latest generation so i encourage you to click on the cards that you'll see here because i'm seeing an evolution even of this current model so they've added more power but the big thing for me is they've added a lot more content right so the criticism was great car great handling all of that but the price was high and now they've said okay well we'll give you more power that's welcome and then we'll also add more content yeah which is huge there are so many standard features now on this car it's coming in at just over 33 000 do you want to read some of the standard features they're in there we've got our cheat notes here for sure um so it's got android auto and apple carplay which is super important six speakers including driver heads head right yeah that's one thing i should say is when you're driving along because it's an open open air you have the speakers in the head rest the first car i ever drove in the early 90s was a miata with that and also when your phone call comes on it goes right here so you hear it yes uh smart city brake support rear view camera led headlights and signature lighting i mean we can go on and on it's got a seven inch color screen uh super easy to use i think one of the big ones is they added these black wheels are now standard equipment right so they're 17 inches yeah so a lot of the features that you kind of really want are in this car one thing i'm seeing though no heated seats this is canada people ah no heated seats and you have to go up to the next level which is the sport package you can get and it's a really nice package because not only do you get sport seats yeah they're um the recaro's they're heated on top of the seats you get an upgraded suspension you get brembo brakes and that's about four and a half thousand dollars more right so a little bit more but you could get by you know just taking the standard features and coming in at just over 33 000. so the car you see here is the base card the only option they have is the optional red paint which is 450 that's right which is really a mazda signature color a lot of our press cars we get all of them have been this color yeah really it's a really pretty color i like it quite a bit so when i say the first thing you think of with an mx-5 or a miata what do you think i think of it as being a chick car and it's not coming for me it's just what i hear all the time is that it's just not that muscle car like a mustang convertible that a lot of guys love but here's the thing mazda says that 60 of sales are from men yeah now that could also be that i bought the car it's registered in my name as a male but you might be the one who drives it like we don't know those dynamics but i would say it's probably pretty evenly spit split here's what i say is if you consider yourself an enthusiast of cars you owe it to yourself to try this car at some point because once you drive this car you quickly realize that as i mentioned it's the most densely thought out little sports car on the road and it's just pure joy well you've always been a big fan of the miata from the get-go this car has been around a long time it launched in 1989 at the chicago auto show love love chicago love chicago but it's been a massive success for mazda you can't take it away from from the company can you there's two things that mazda has done right first of all they stuck with it right how many great little cars and fun cars have come and gone like think of the prelude from honda oh yeah great car long gone right a neighbor had a parade yeah exactly um toyota seleca or celica yeah long gone so there's been all of these great cars that have come and gone mazda has stuck with it and on top of that they didn't get fat and bloated and big they kept it this tiny little fun to drive car yeah and enough of me talking it's time for you to drive you ready but i have one more question for you and i'm just curious to know if you know the answer to this because you've gone on lots of press launches for mazda you said you've been in you know the miata countless times and has anybody ever asked how they came up with the name miata oh i've heard it but i can't remember what it is okay so i thought this was the coolest first off mazda when they came out with this car they were actually gonna call it a ro had rotary in in the game rotary and jet yeah but they came up with miata which actually means in the old high german language prize oh it's so it's german-based it's german-based okay and so um i think it's kind of cool that it has this name attached to it because it's very fitting yeah and they never went with a rotary engine so so there you go all right time for andrea to drive you ready i'm ready i'm going to give you a little lesson first though okay before we get to andrea trying manual she'd love it if you'd follow along on instagram motormouth underscore andrea and for my page it's motor mouth underscore auto okay i'll do my little spiel about how a manual transmission works so just think of the engine as turning like it's running so as a turning motion right okay and then the wheels are turning right and if they're connected and the wheels stop what happens to the engine it stops turning right so that clutch is the buffer that allows you to come up to a light put the clutch in keep the engine running and then release it and away you go it's also what you use to uh change gears put your foot on the clutch all the way down okay now you're in gear so i would pull it back into neutral okay there there you go neutral's in the middle like that and push the button okay now um because the the neutral is like having the clutch and let the clutch out it's the same thing okay so so having it in neutral you're not connected okay so put the clutch in now you're gonna grab first gear oh wait put it what gear do you have to get in uh ask for subscribe but there is no ass so just subscribe we practiced that put it in s for subscribe and also hit that notification bell all right we did that all right put it in it put it in first gear okay and that's up there okay so i showed andrea before the h pattern of where the gears are all right put your hand brake down here yeah okay that goes down you're in gear now slowly release the clutch and you'll start to feel it grab yeah okay then you take your foot off the brake and add a little bit of gas all right that's okay it's okay same thing you don't have to put it take you you've got the clutch in so you can leave it in first gear start the engine okay so it's a little bit of a dance you start to do i have to keep my foot on the brake or i can release the brake now yeah because we're flat you're not going to roll over right okay release the clutch a little bit okay whoa speedy and now clutch and let it out oh okay you're doing it slow down slow down slow down because um this is all new right yeah so so basically that's what you've done you've you've used the clutch to engage the engine and also to change gears right okay we should confess we did practice a little bit yesterday we did we did go around the neighborhood just for a short time and it was pretty good i did okay yeah you're doing really well okay let's grab third gear so clutch in release the throttle grab third gear and let it out there you go see there you're in it now hands back on the wheel so that's one thing you have to get used to is is switching from the um the steering wheel to the transmission yes okay we're coming up to some speed bumps here so go down into second gear yeah go down to second gear clutch in back down to the bottom there you go let it out easy peasy and hand back on the wheel there you go and now you're just driving that's pretty tricky hand back on the wheel because you really want to leave it there well driving with one hand doesn't give you much steering capability and this doesn't really do anything and actually you can wear out the bushings in the transmission right by resting your hand on there it's kind of people feel cool doing it but it doesn't really serve any purpose right you're there just to change gears and then you take your hand off yeah now um the hill hold so what happens is you the the car knows okay we're gonna grab third gear now up to third there you go clutch out you're doing it the car knows you're on a hill and um when you take your foot off the brake it'll hold those rear brakes for three seconds which allows you enough time to let the clutch out and to get going this is super fun it is it just feels so light and agile fun i see the appeal of the miata do you see the appeal of a manual transmission i do this is the real thing we had two porsche 911s andrea i know and they were manual transmission and you wanted nothing to do with that well it's not because i didn't want to learn manual transmission i just didn't want to do anything to those cars because they were your pride and joy i had a miata well you know what maybe i would be really open to it yeah when andrea and i started dating i had a bmw m6 i remember it wow and we um went i think it was it was it in port angeles yeah port angeles in washington state i said come on i'll teach you how to drive manual and after about a couple of hundred meters you're like why don't need to drive this they will sell you an automatic it is true and automatics are pretty good but that m6 that was really tricky i don't remember it being as easy as that but you're a blonde in a ponytail driving a miata you are the stereotype huh yeah it's true and you're okay with that what do i care exactly i don't care uh i remember that with the uh volkswagen cab same thing yeah i remember when we started dating i had a i had a yellow a bright canary yellow volkswagen um cabriolet with white pink striped seats yeah and we were driving out this way towards surrey and these guys in a pickup truck looked out the window and they said dude is that your girlfriend's car i know i didn't get to pick i didn't get to pick well you don't get to pick the color so you just have to go with it when you're reviewing cars you just pick it up and go oh i see canary but i love that car there were many times that we went out for lunch in that car well maybe that's how i landed you honey it was all the fancy press cars oh i don't think so i don't think that's how you landed me it's the zork spingler charm yeah there's something about you there's something about you like a bad smell you can't throw it up here okay let's uh let's see if we can pull in somewhere here let the clutch out oh easy easy okay stop stop stop okay now now you can let her go okay a little bit of gas oh you stalled it all right let him go by oh there's the cyclist coming a lot of pressure here andrea okay after the white car okay first gear i'm in first oh yeah he's waving he's probably never hard acceleration second gear let go let go let go you have to you have to do that dance you have to let off the throttle just as you put the clutch in you got it that time so it's this sort of like your two feet dance like this yeah and then there's the third element which is what's called heel and toe breaking where you break and you blip the throttle at the same time right that's very progressive that's very advanced i should say sure that's that can take years to learn that yeah but um it is tricky you just it's i think when you're driving it's just got to be top of mind like riding a bike you can't you can't think about it it's got to be secondary or you kind of panic a bit here's the thing about driving a manual transmission you learn so much more about the car when you drive a manual and especially a car like this the longer you own it the more you drive it the more you become um its partner like if you got one with the car i went with the car because what happens is is you get to know it's like you're a road buddy you get to know where the power is where the torque is where the handling is and you get a lot more feedback when you drive a manual transmission it's just more fun yeah yeah for sure good job andrea good job thank you you're a good instructor you're a good instructor but i'm also a really good student if you don't mind six or yourself well andrea you lost your cherry to a bright cherry red mx-5 miata for the driving stick however oh wow uh it was great i had a lot of fun was it easy i think i did a pretty good job i didn't actually find it that hard so overall with this car i mean it is just the most densely thought out little package of joy isn't it yeah it's just an amazing little car i can see the appeal i like that it's fuel efficient and i really like the price tag so zach to keep me motivated to drive stick hmm what are you thinking that i may need something red with black wheels could be could do carcass canada provides the dealer's cost a list of rebates plus discounted interest rates use the promo code motormouth to become an expert member and get access to exclusive and powerful savings the link is in the description below

Channel: Motormouth

Views: 29,717

Rating: 4.8191214 out of 5

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Id: czrVV-lNabA

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020