The French Racing Blue Roadster

[thatbluena6]

Hey guys, my name is Nate. I live in Adelaide, Australia. After spending countless hours looking through build threads the past few years, I thought it would be a great time to finally start a build thread of my own. I'm not sure how active I'll be on here yet, so feel free to follow me on Instagram - @thatbluena6

Apologies in advance, this might be a big first post but we'll see how we go. This will hopefully give you some context as to how I came about the car and the reason I have chosen the path I've gone down with my build. I'll try to cut it down as best as I can.

Going way back to 2009-2010, I was in my final years of high school. I don't specifically remember what the spark was, but it was around this time, I fell in love with the NA Roadster. I've always been a huge Japanese car fan and this may have been contributed by my friends (one of which had an R34 GTST Skyline) I always lusted for a JDM car, I got very close to purchasing both an R32 and 180sx. But at the time things just didn't work out or I backed out of the deal. I think my decision making was influenced heavily by my parents at the time. They would always tell me to work hard, save my money for a house first and then look at treating myself to a sports car. Looking back now, I cant thank them enough as this is exactly what I did. Yes I missed out on some really cool cars but in the end they really showed me the way to set myself up for life. I still had fun with less expensive cars, which in turn actually taught me a lot of what I know today, servicing, general maintenance, audio/electrical modifications etc. My previous cars aren't much to talk about but my current daily is a 2009 Mazda 6 Sports/Luxury package, so the Roadster isn't my first or only Mazda in my stable. Throughout the years between 2010-2017, everytime I got into an NA MX-5 for test drive it reminded me just how special this car was to me. I found myself smiling the whole time driving it and loved its natural ability on the mountain roads. I had to do something about it.

The story continues......

After what felt like an eternity, we now we arrive to late December 2017. The itch to get into an NA MX-5 never left, I would always be looking online daily in the year or two leading up to 2017. I test drove a couple but never got a deal done, most of the time due to the owner wanting too much for a flogged car. That was until one day in December 2017, I came across an ad for a 1990 Mariner Blue NA6 which only had 114,00kms (~70K miles). The owner, who was an older gentleman wasn't asking much for it. I messaged him straight away, got the address and drove down in a flash. Upon arrival was a nice Mariner Blue NA6 with the top down sitting in the drive way. The owner was selling it due to old age, he had actually planned on keeping it and had it stored away for the past couple of years but decided it was time to part with it.

It was defiantly needing some love. The interior was very dusty and had some broken parts like the tombstone, the soft top rear plastic window was also completely shot and it did have some battle scars. The headrest speakers and power windows also weren't working and the car did have some kind of oil leak. But the car had good bones. At the time, I didn't know how much it was going to cost to get it up to spec but figured, this will be my weekend project car and will always been a weekender so time was on my side. My wife (fiancé at the time) actually came down with me to look at the car. I told her all the faults the car had, her response was - if it doesn't bother you it doesn't matter, this is a car you have wanted for so long, if you're happy, I'm happy.

That's all I needed to hear, so with that I was happy to look past its faults and accept I'd have to put in time and money to get it where I would like but being that I ended up getting it for cheap it was a steal and a deal I couldn't look past. I ended up collecting the car a few days before Christmas 2017. What a Christmas it was!

So the car is now with its 3rd owner, me. I still have the original documents and also the original owners paperwork for purchasing the car back in 1990. The Mariner Blue paintwork is in ok condition for its age but with the dents/scratches etc, the paint will defiantly need a respray in the future. The car had absolutely zero modifications done to the car, even has the factory fitted CD player that connects to the original tape deck headunit! This was awesome as it gives me a completely blank canvas to work with. The car is a base model with Air conditioning and power windows, no power steering but I prefer this.

Here's a photo of the day I got it:



ok, I think that's enough for now. More to come.....