The Only Time Miata Was Not the Answer

From Road & Track

I popped open the tan vinyl-covered glovebox door and fifteen disposable hypodermic needles fell out to litter the floormats, which were still in good condition. I recoiled as if I'd been bitten, hard enough to smack my head on the Hard Dog rollbar then bounce it off the lining of the hardtop. After twisting my way back out of the little car and stumbling back into my house, I called the previous owner.

"Not to bother you," I said, "but there are a bunch of nee. . ."

"Throw them away," he said, quickly and nervously. "Just walk to a trash can and throw them away. And if you, ahhh, find anything else in there, you should definitely throw it away, definitely." Then he hung up the phone with an audible slam. To be honest, I wasn't even that surprised. These kind of things happen when you buy a Miata that you don't need for a wife who doesn't really want one.

It was slightly over twelve years ago. I was stuck with an absolute albatross of a South-African-built kit car, a real piece of junk that had sort of tried to kill me by snapping a frame crossmember and performing a 180-degree half-spin right in the middle of Mosport's infamous Turn Two. The manufacturer wouldn't warranty the car, so I had the frame re-welded and decided to try to sell the car with full disclosure of all its problems. Needless to say, my phone wasn't exactly ringing off the hook, even though I was selling it for fifty cents on the dollar with just eleven thousand miles on the clock.

Six months after I listed the car, I got a call from a fellow, a doctor in a small town. He wanted the car, even with the problems. But I had to deliver it to him. At that point, I owned a brand-new trailer (later stolen) and a brand-new Land Rover Discovery (later traded) so I agreed to pull the thousand-mile round-trip. He was nervous on the phone, jittery, repeating the same phrases again and again. But I was so desperate to sell my kitcar that I didn't really care.

I got to his house shortly after dusk. In person, he was short, slim, thirtyish with bloodshot eyes and hands that shook in his pockets. I knew from the moment he started speaking that, as Darth Vader once told Han Solo, the arrangement was going to be changed. "I, ah, don't have all of the cash," he said. "But I do, ah, have this Miata. If you take five grand off the price, you can take the Miata home with you." Well, I was looking at pulling an empty trailer home.

"Show me the Miata," I said, somewhat dejectedly. I was expecting a basketcase. But it was, in fact, a nearly perfect 1992 "C" package car, black and tan, with 36,000 miles on it and an "SCCA National Solo Winner" sticker on the rollbar. It was very well-prepared. No way it was only worth five grand. And the title was clear.

"I'll, ah, have my racing mechanic load the car for you," the doctor said, and a man who was even smaller and more furtive appeared out of the shadows to drive the Miata up onto my trailer. "We. Ah, need to move quickly. You," he stated, hands shaking in the open air as the so-called mechanic tied down the last strap, "can leave now, if that's alright."

I drove back through the night to Ohio, cursing the doctor's pal the whole way for loading the Miata too far back on the trailer. The Discovery, never the best of tow vehicles anyway, was all but unmanageable above fifty mph so I just sat in the right lane and suffered through the low-speed trip. I made it home around nine in the morning and got the shock of my life when I saw that both of my loading ramps had gone missing. I guess the mechanic hadn't secured them. It occurred to me that something terrible could have happened on the road behind me. Perhaps something terrible did happen.

I used a couple of two-by-fours to get the Miata off the trailer. My first wife came storming out of the house. At the time, of course, I didn't call her "my first wife." I called her "The Boss." Like Springsteen.

"Why," she asked, in a tone that implied she already knew the answer and was manifestly displeased with it, "is there a Miata in our driveway?" I was bone-tired and short on answers --- but then I remembered, as if from a dream, that she had been obsessed with Miatas when we were sophomores at university together. We'd even built and painted a model of the '91 BRG car together, mostly because we had a lot of time on our hands and very little money.

"This, ah, Miata," I said, having been reduced to a facsimile of the shaking-hands doctor by fatigue and stress, "is… a gift! For you! It's the Miata you always wanted! I've been saving this surprise for you!"

"Hmm," was the non-committal response. "I'll give it a shot. But we don't really have the space for it."

"I just know that you will love it," I said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to sleep until tomorrow." That evening, I woke up, started cleaning the car up a bit, and found the needles in the glovebox. Something was definitely up with that doctor. But the Miata itself was legit from the tires to the top of the rollbar.

At the time, my wife had just taken delivery of an absolutely kitted-out Stage 3 Dodge SRT-4, custom-ordered with her name on the Monroney sticker and with all of the Mopar goodies installed before she took delivery. It was a vicious car, faster than my Porsche 993 and absolutely antisocial. At the time, I didn't really have a day job and I would sleep every morning until I heard the bad-boy Neon fire up in the garage beneath our bedroom.

So on Day One of our Miata ownership, I woke up around noon to find that she'd taken the Miata to work. That evening, I asked her how she liked her new sports car.

"It's not very fast," she said, and that was the end of her opinions.

On Day Two, I woke up around noon again. When I asked her about the Miata, all I got was a mild frown and a harrumphing noise.

Day Three, I was woken up at eight-fifteen sharp by the sound of the SRT-4 bellowing beneath me. And that was it for Mrs. Baruth's experiment with Miata ownership. "Too slow, too boring. Sell it," she commanded, and I listed it for a profitable $6500, adding the word "Firm" at the end to discourage as many people as possible.

While I was waiting for the buyers to call, I started driving the Miata around. Compared to either of my Porsches, it was hilariously slow. I was thinner back then by about forty-five pounds but I still didn't find the little car terribly accommodating. Yet there was a real joy in the machine. Each drive was an experience in wringing out the little engine, snick-snicking the gears, enjoying the truthfulness of the steering and the unfiltered way the nose bent into a turn.

After maybe three weeks, I'd decided to keep the Miata and run it in that summer's regional autocross season. Then the phone rang. It was a kid from Michigan whose mother had agreed to buy him a sports car.

"Well, I can't tow it to Michigan," I lied.

"We can come get it," the kid said.

"The price is firm. No negotiation."

"Not a problem, we weren't going to negotiate."

"Um… it has to be cash, sixty-five one-hundred dollar bills." At this point I was out of ways to discourage him.

"Would you like serialized bills?" I knew when I was beaten. He came down, paid me, and went home. Nice kid.

And that's the end of the tale, except for one thing. Two years later, I got a call from that doctor's attorney. His estate attorney. Turns out the good doctor wasn't long for this world.

"We found a kit car of some kind in a storage unit," the attorney said. "There was no title. We ran a lost title search and came up empty. Finally came up with the idea of running a lost title search nationwide. Found out that you're the owner."

"I am absolutely not the owner," I said. "I sold it to him. Ask his wife."

"She says she's never laid eyes on you or the car," was the response. "Just come get your property."

"How about," I told him, "you send me the title and I'll sign it over to the widow. I don't ever want to see that thing again. And," I added hastily, thinking back to that evening in my driveway, "whatever you find in that car-it isn't mine."

Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week.