2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata: Short Takes From Our Editors

I may have written the First Drive review for Motor Authority, but I wasn’t the only member of the Internet Brands Automotive team at the 2016 Mazda MX-5 press drive in Westlake Village, California. We were lucky enough to have five journalists at the event, including one former first-gen Miata owner, Marty Padgett. Here we present each writer’s take on the fourth-generation of Mazda’s delightful little roadster.

Marty Padgett

I'll take the driver's seat here as the voice of the Miata purist. From 1995 to 1999, I owned one of the originals, a red 1990 Mazda MX-5 Miata, with a few options (power windows, headrest speakers), bought secondhand from a fanatic who only clocked 27,000 miles before me.

I drove the hell out of that little red car in the brief interlude I called a freelance career. Up and down the east coast, from Atlanta to Washington, stuffed to its gills with luggage and pets. It was a terrible long-distance car, so loud the radio was an afterthought, so cramped I stopped every hundred miles to reset my hips.

ALSO SEE: This Woman Drives The World’s Fastest Charger SRT Hellcat: Video

But for the "final mile" of driving at either end of an interstate slog, it was a diamond, pure, brilliant. Nothing steers like the original Miata. Nothing comes close to extracting as much pure driving joy out of an undulating country road.

After driving the new ND Miata, I can already pinpoint where OG NA fans will pick nits. Some of the differences with the ur-Miata make it a better car to drive, but stray further from that elusive first-gen mechanical harmony. The snicky, stubby little shifter from 1990? It's supplanted by a sweet-shifting gearbox with a lever motion that's technically, vastly superior in its shift action--but it's been shorn of the tactile pleasure of having to wait out the original's half-second of reluctance.

This new Miata rides like a car two sizes larger, it's so well-isolated. The doors are higher at my shoulder. You can carry out a conversation at 70 mph on a crowded freeway. It's an adult version of the toy car I used to grow into my twenties.

Ugh. Adult.

MUST WATCH: Porsche 918 Spyder Driver Showing Off Crashes In Car Park: Video

By the time I sent my MX-5 to a new home--I found a really nice farm for him to live on, I swear--every body panel had been repaired and repainted. Other drivers, including a dump truck and a duallie, casually elbowed it aside at highway speeds a couple of times. I'd replaced the top with a new one sporting a glass window, so no more dumb-ass friends could poke a hole in the plastic window crack, turning it from a nuisance into a $500 shop bill.

I gave it a next life with only 54,000 miles on the clock, and have regretted its drive-off regularly ever since.

New-car press drives always are tougher when you've owned the car in question. The new roadster's definitely rekindled my MX-5 love, but the Miata I want lives on a Craigslist classified ad yet to be found.

The search goes on.

Bengt Halvorson

The Miata has always been a car that finds its charm in simplicity. In the 2016 Miata, that’s more evident than it’s ever been—with harmonious engineering and design, inside and out, that you won’t find in any other car with this pricetag.

All the details are right. You quickly bond with the MX-5 Miata because of how closely the driving position feels in sync with the dynamic center of this car, and how there’s no delay to your inputs; forget about multiple performance modes as you simply don’t need them here. The frisky 2.0-liter four blips quickly; clutch takeup is forgiving yet precise; the shifter snicks neatly; and the pedals are placed perfectly, even for this long-legged driver. Leave the top down at 70 mph and you can still have a conversation, and perhaps even more importantly, you can fling the top open (or pull it closed) at stoplights.

CHECK OUT: Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse Cracks 235 MPH At Idaho’s Sun Valley: Video

Behind this latest Miata, like its predecessors, there’s a team that truly sweated out the details. The lone exception to the Miata’s simplicity is the infotainment system, which we’d be happy to delete in favor of a clean dash [hint, hint]. For the time being, there’s no way around the freestanding system (although base models get a smaller audio unit), and the Commander Control is ill-placed behind the shifter, leaving no room for elbows (it’s required when the vehicle is in motion). What were they thinking?