CarCare101: Project Miata: An Introduction to a Modern Classic

[Bruce Nunnally]

I know exactly what you’re thinking. A Miata? What in hades? No self  respecting man would want to drive a Mazda Miata. It’s a freaking girls car for crying out loud!!! Well you’d be right. It’s a chick car. Tiny little 4 cylinder engine, in a tiny little convertible. The stock wheels are called “daisy wheels” because they look like a freaking flower and this particular car  is a wonderful shade of Lipstick Red. These yahoos have gone and lost their ever loving mind.

But then again you’d be oh… so… very… wrong. Because you forgot some very important facts.

1. Double wishbone suspension, both front and rear.
2. Stock coil over suspension.
3. Front Engined & Rear Wheel Drive, the way God intended cars to be.
4. Uber light weight. We’re talking just a touch over the 1 ton mark. (Yup that’s right it makes that Corvette you’ve been lusting after look like a fat pig.)
5. Perfect 50/50 weight distribution. Yes, you read that right. It’s perfect. Not close, or almost, or nearly, but a perfect 50/50.
6. The only cars that handle better than a Miata sport a Lotus badge.
7. More Mazdas are raced every weekend than any other car in the world. The vast majority of those are Miatas.
8. The Miata the best selling sports car in history with over 900,000 units sold.
9. Pop up head lights have an infinite cool factor.
10. Every year more Miatas are sold with a manual transmission than with an automatic (74% on average). And we all know real men row their own gears.

So now that we’ve established the fact that Miatas are in fact pretty bad *smurf* little cars. Let’s talk briefly about the history of Mazda’s British inspired two seat roadster. According to legend it all started when Bob Hall was complaining about the lack of a cheap British style sports car..

In 1976, 

Bob Hall

, a journalist at 

Motor Trend

magazine who was an expert in Japanese cars and fluent in the language, met Kenichi Yamamoto and Gai Arai, head of Research and Development at Mazda. Yamamoto and Gai Arai asked Hall what kind of car Mazda should make in the future:

[6]

I babbled [...] how the [...] simple, bugs-in-the-teeth, wind-in-the-hair, classically-British sports car doesn’t exist anymore. I told Mr. Yamamoto that somebody should build one [...] inexpensive roadster.

[7]

Little did Bob know that this offhanded conversation would lead to Tom Matano heading up the concept and design project that became the Mazda Miata. During the development phase and even to this day the Miata design team strictly adheres to a set of principles that ensures the Miata will stay true to it’s roots and not wonder in to the land of focus group accounting blandness. These principles can be summed up in one phrase. “Jinba ittai” which loosely translates as “Horse & Rider as one”.

With the first generation of the Miata, the phrase [Jinba ittai] was developed into five specific core design requirements:

[9]

• That the car would be as compact and as light as possible while meeting global safety requirements.
• That the cockpit would comfortably accommodate two full-stature occupants with no wasted space.
• That the basic layout would continue with the original’s front-midship rear-drive configuration with the engine positioned ahead of the driver but behind the front axle for 50:50 weight distribution.
• That all four wheels would be attached by wishbone or multi-link suspension systems to maximize tire performance, road grip, and dynamic stability.
• And that a power-plant frame would again provide a solid connection between the engine and rear-mounted differential to sharpen throttle response.

The first of these tiny Japanese/British roadsters rolled off the assembly line for the 1990 model year. Our not so pristine Project Miata was built in late July that same year. Through 20 years and three generation the Miata has stayed true to it’s roots and that is the main reason for it’s success. If you’re just dying to know more about the car’s history check out our Miata review below or

. (Fast forward to 12:10 to see the Miata Video.

 

So we’ve covered the history of the Miata, and all the reasons why they are cool, but we still haven’t answered the big question. Why did we choose this car as the first project car for Car Care 101? Well, it all started way back when I saw Stacey David build The Banshee on his show Gearz. I’ve been watching his show every weekend since I was a kid. It’s part of my Saturday morning ritual. After seeing what he was able to do with the car I quickly fell in love with the idea of building a hot rod using a Mazda Miata.

Add to that the fact that Miata’s  are cheap, and I mean dirt cheap which is a good thing because at Car Care 101, we’re broke. We don’t have the same budgets those mainstream TV show have. Oh hell, let’s be honest neither this show nor Burnout Radio have any budget what so ever. We do these shows because we love cars and we’re gearheads to the core. So in case you haven’t figured it out yet this will be a budget build.

So they’re cool, and their cheap, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a great project car. No what makes Miatas great project cars are the plethora of parts available for them and just how easy they are to work on. These cars are quite simple, especially early models like ours. There is a huge amount of support for these cars in the aftermarket, and we’ll be making full use of them in the coming months as we put together one hell of a car.

Now you may be asking, just what we’re planning to do with Project Miata. Well that’s actually quite simple. Drive the hell out of it. No seriously, I’m driving it right now… well not right now obviously, but Project Miata is my daily driver. Just like most of you guys out there I can only afford to have one car hanging around, so my project car is also my main set of wheels. That fact gives us a really cool approach for Car Care 101. You see we’re building Project Miata just like you would at home. On the weekends, in the garage with simple tools. Not in some big fancy shop with all the latest and greatest gadgets.

With that in mind Project Miata is going to be a three stage build, quite similar to what you guys would do with your project cars at home.

 

Phase One: Make the darn thing run. When we picked up Project Miata, it was doing duty as the quintessential girls car. It belonged to a High School Cheerleader. Her daddy had gotten tired of fixing the car every time his daughter broke it, so we picked Project Miata up for a song. As you can guess Project Miata was in pretty sad shape by the time we got it. 20 years of neglect had taken it’s toll. So this part of the build is all about breathing some new life back in to this tired old girls car.

Side Note:

I ended up buying this car for one dollar per pound. (For those of you that haven’t read the Wikipedia article I linked to further up the page, that would be $2100).

Phase Two: MORE POWER!!!!! If there’s one bad thing about the Miata its a complete and total lack of power. There’s no two ways about it. They are SSSSSLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. Happily there’s a fix for that. Forced induction. We’ll be shooting to make 200 rear wheel horse power by the end of this phase. For those of you keeping tabs, thats more than double what the tiny little 1.6l 4 banger put out when Project Miata rolled off the assembly line 20 years ago giving us a power to weight ratio of 200hp per ton. To put that in perspective that is a  better power to weight ratio than the new Chevy Camaro SS or the Dodge Challenger SRT8.

Phase Three: It goes to Eleven! If you thought phase two was cool we’ll you’re in for a surprise here. In this step we jerk out the entire drive train and replace it with a fire breathing monster of a V-8. We’re shooting for 400 rear wheel horse power and 40 miles per gallon. No that’s not a misprint. 400hp with 40mpg. In case you’re wondering that’s the same power to weight ratio as the Bugatti Veryon, with a fuel economy better than a Honda Civic. We’re going to accomplish this though some aerodynamic trickery and creative use of gearing and engine mapping. Is it unattainable? Maybe. But it’s definitely within the realm of possibility. Currently there are several Miatas running around with LS V-8′s in them getting well over 30mpg. So hopefully we can have our cake and eat it too.

So with all we are planning to do to Project Miata it would be easy to get lost. However we came up with Three simple rules forthis Project to help keep us focused.

Rule Numero Uno: Don’t Put it On Ugly – When we pop the hood on this bad boy we want to be proud of the car. That means taking the extra time do do things right. Clean everything up, give it a new coat of paint and make it look right.

Rule Numero Dos: Better than stock – If at all possible, anything that we replace needs to be better than what we take off. It’s been 20 years since this car was new, that mean’s we had alot of time to make improvements.

Rule Numero Trece: Stick to the Plan – This is by far the MOST important of the three rules. We’ve created and over arching set of goals for this car, as well as detailed plans of attack for each phase. It’s very easy to get lost half way though a project and never get finished. Our worst yet we could end up with some monstrosity like this.

So there you have it. That’s the basic’s of Project Miata. We hope you guys will subscribe to the show. We’ve got some great stuff coming your way. Starting with stopping. The first order of business is getting Project Miata stopping on a dime. You can see the first part of that build thread here. If you like what where doing please let us know in the comments below, or better yet share this page with your friends on facebook or twitter, hell email it to everyone you know and post up a link on all the forums you visit too while you’re at it. Through our *”Refer a Friend Program” you’ll get ten **internet dollars for every one you refer.

*No actual friends necessary.

**Internet dollars are not redeemable for cash. Internet dollars are only usable at wikipedia, twitter, and youtube and may not used in place of actual money.

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[Bruce Nunnally]

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