Across America in an ancient Miata
How 2800 miles in an old Miata prepped me for the new one
Across America in an ancient Miata to pay respect to the new kid.
BY ALEX KIERSTEIN
The Miata is about having less. A cursory glance at the monastic cell of a cabin will tell you as much. Mazda pared it down to the strictly necessary, and instead of a void in our collective conscious, the Miata's myth and misunderstanding grew outsized.
Use the Miata as intended, and the rest of your universe just falls away. It's you and the elements around you—the ultimate exercise in introspection. It's minimalism designed to elicit maximum enjoyment.
I'm fascinated by this inherent contradiction, and I'll have plenty of time to think about it. With no A/C and the top down, I can't hear the radio at all, and a phone call is out of the question. For five days, it's just me, my thoughts and 2862 miles from Knoxville to Monterey.
I'm taking the long way.
The first day takes me as far as Henryetta, Oklahoma—770 miles away from rankly-hot Knoxville. The town appears to be populated entirely by high school kids, mainly boys, the air around them shimmering with mischief and boredom. Nearly every vehicle in town is a full-size truck. The bored boys all drive them or stand by them in grocery-store parking lots, scanning for girls who they imagine have noticed said trucks. The Million-Mile Miata suddenly felt like the only Miata within a million miles of this place. Then, at a gas station, a guy approached me. In his regional drawl, he told me he had a Miata, too.
"It's not as nice as this one," he said, waving a hand at my car.
"I'm not sure how that could be possible," I stammered.
"Well, mine has about 225,000 miles on it."
"Oh, that's not even broken in," I said. With a pitying eyebrow arch and a smile, I pointed at the bug-spattered blue smudge parked between two 5000-lb trucks. "That's at 335,000, and we're shooting for a million."
He became overly polite, and his eyes darted to the door of the convenience store. It was as if he realized that he had a real-live zealot before him—a true believer. He eyed me with the suspicion one holds for a door-knocker who promises to save your soul. Driving a Miata in truck country makes a statement even if you have no agenda, I realized. Basically, you're the weirdo.
I said goodbye to the man, who was now a lot less talkative, and headed back to my hotel, which had the ambiance of a long-blighted truck stop halfway between nowhere and nowhere good.
I've driven 200 miles out of my way on dusty, lonely Oklahoma highways just so I can climb through the San Juan Mountains from Ouray to Durango. Highway 550 is treacherous, steep, and crowded. Ouray sits at 7700 feet, and from there the road just goes up.
In that oxygen-starved air, normal incline starts are full-throttle affairs. Momentum is more valuable than the gold they pulled out of these hills, so it's frustrating when, at the exit of a hairpin just above Ouray just minutes into the drive, traffic came to a dead stop. Drivers stood next to their cars, craning their necks for a better view up the road. Fire and police personnel were a quarter-mile ahead, staring down into the sheer walls of the gorge. There were no guardrails or shoulders; just a foot or two of gravel, and a column of air that terminated in a rocky riverbed a couple hundred feet below.
I never figured out what happened. The rescue workers looked like they didn't have much to do, so whatever occurred was either very bad or it was nothing at all. When they turned from the ledge to wave the traffic through, I tucked into the line and chugged up Red Mountain Pass.
I'd eventually pass a sign claiming that in 1878, gold ore wagons crossed at this point, 11,018 feet above the sea. Unlike the wagon drivers, I could count on momentum and smooth tarmac to make up for what my oxygen-starved engine couldn't provide on the way up. But I was in no hurry to get down, and I worried that I ran out of the road that I'd come so far to drive.
I expected to coast into Durango with hot brakes and disappointment, but instead, the road unexpectedly changed course. Another climb followed—Molas Pass: 10,910 feet, lower but prettier. The Miata worked hard, but the water temps remained steady. The air was thin and crisp with altitude and pine sap. I pulled into a gravel wash that may have been a fire service road, gingerly picked over rocks and left the Miata on a ledge. I walked through the pines and then back to the wash to peer up the primitive road. I wanted to see where it went, but a curve made that impossible from my vantage point. Looking west towards the rise, I realized the little blue roadster wasn't the tool for this job. I found a sign and snapped a picture. I'll have to come back.
I headed down once more, but up as well. A third pass, lower, topped out at 10,640 feet. After the summit, it was a long, steep slide into Durango, and then I bent southwest towards Utah and Nevada. The pine trees melted away as the altitude dropped, giving way to rocks baking in the high-desert sun. I wished I could linger in the hills. Three passes was more than I'd hoped for, but I also realized it was less than I wanted. Sticking around was not an option, though. I still had a long drive ahead to Las Vegas.
I'm not fond of Vegas, and fifty miles north of the strip's gaudy lights, my luck ran out. Traffic jam. At least I now understood why my nav suddenly added 90 minutes to my travel time. I'd chalked it up to some sort of signal cross-up, or a time zone change I hadn't kept track of. Nope. It was just stationary red lights for miles.
The sun had just disappeared behind the low crest a few minutes earlier, and it was still a stifling 104 degrees. With the sun down, I figured I could at least enjoy a respite from the heat as the desert cooled down around me. That was a naive thought. After soaking up radiation for half a day, the tarmac, rocks, overpasses, and the sandy loam itself repaid the favor and released that stored heat back in the air. It would eventually cool to the upper 90s in the city, but in the interim, I roasted and fidgeted as the Miata crept along. I spent the next hour and a half sharpening my hatred of the broiling desert.
Las Vegas is way too bright. I felt like a cockroach caught in the kitchen light as I drove into the garishly illuminated gambler's oasis. The streets were thick with revelers clutching drinks as I rolled past places that were cheap imitations of other places. All I wanted was to sit in a cold, dark hotel room, but I was constantly thwarted by impatient drivers cutting me off in their artificially cooled glassed-in cages. When I finally checked in, I inhaled a beer and decided to burn the clothes I had sweated in over the last 14 hours. The discovery that my room had a washing machine moved me half to tears.
A night's sleep with the thermostat set to "meat locker" reset my internal temp gauge enough to not mind that it was almost 90 outside, despite it being early in the morning. My solo journey in a self-propelled sweat lodge was over; it was time to meet up with three other Miatas and caravan the rest of the way to California. I'd get to be all alone in the company of others.
The Miata is the most-produced roadster of all time. They're common, they're cheap—new or old. Practical for an impractical car: They don't leak and have few vices, they're polite and your parents will approve. This sounds like the recipe for automotive saltpeter, a buzzkill of the highest magnitude. After all, we love outlaws and underdogs.
Highway 33 out of Ojai is a rambunctious stretch of nicely radiused pavement marching left-right-left over ridges and down the other sides. It's hot and bright. The cadence is intoxicating—a waving flute and I'm the charmed cobra bobbing and weaving. Get it right, and everything is stripped away, just you and the moment and the satisfying bob of the suspension in transition and the throaty bray of the little 1.6 exhaling. No stopwatch. No bragging rights. These roads are proper, and the Mazda is the proper thing for them.
It was easy to forget I wasn't alone. The lead car in the column signaled an unscheduled stop—a call of nature in a barren and desolate spot. Parked in the pullout ahead of me were three other Miatas: the astonishing Atomic Betty, fast and sorted; Whoosh, the old turbo car that's still fast and strong; and the Bowmans' NC, unnamed, a long-distance trooper with sticky shoes and some iron-butt equipped pilots. There was also a lasso half-buried in the playa.
It went into the Million-Mile Miata's trunk, and with it a bunch of dust. In the heat, fine grit has already coated every surface—what's a bit more in the trunk?
Some obscure karmic offense put a solid wall of rented convertible Mustangs in our path up to Monterey. Their slothlike pace caused a livid Bowman to fantasize about dragging bumbling tourists out of their rentals and casting them off the cliffs—cormorant fodder. We prayed for a passing zone and cursed our rotten luck.
The 2016 MX-5 Miata reveal happened while we were somewhere south of Monterey. With no wireless coverage, we couldn't even stream the video. Dusty, windburned, and tired down to the quick, we shuffled to our rooms, and hot showers. Before curling under the sheets in a ball of sore limbs, I peered at the first photos on my phone. Before I could formulate an opinion, I was out cold.
The next day, we made our way to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. In a tent in the parking lot, the new Miata sat in duplicate. One was a right-hand-drive preproduction car, the other a styling mockup with no drivetrain at all. In person, the ND Miata looks lithe and aggressive. It's not cute—it's not even conventionally pretty. The proportions, though, are perfect. The short rear deck tucks tight against the rear wheels, the car looks longer because of it. There's no mistaking this for anything other than a Miata, but it's not the conservative re-imagining any of us. It's the exact opposite.
I cocked my head to the side and stared at the car, unable to make heads or tails of it. Then it was time to hit the track.
Coming out of turn 5 heading up the hill, I decided to stop taking pictures and get a real-life sense of the course I'd run hundreds of times, albeit virtually. Laguna Seca's elevation changes are stunning, even in a wheezing blue roadster. I tell Chris Cantle, who was driving, that I'm just going to enjoy the lap.
We compressed into turn 6 and steamed further up the hill. Chris' smirk grew wider. I had no idea what was about to happen.
It seemed to go terribly wrong. The line through the Corkscrew was off; we were headed right for a storm drain in the blind spot inside of the turn—too far inside. At best, we'll drop a tire into the dirt and go around—at worst, a wall would rearrange the little Miata's mangled exterior. I would have braced for impact, but it was already over.
Chris chuckled audibly as we cruised, unharmed, into 9. "So, that's the Zanardi line." The look on his face was the same one worn by a cat presenting a disemboweled mouse to its owners feet.
A Mazda guy was out in an RX-8 pace car, so we pitted and swapped seats. When the bleating rotary screamed past, I gave the Miata the beans and crawled up to speed. My first time through the Andretti hairpin was clean, undramatic, and slow. Chris noted that we should have brought a newspaper for the straights. Maybe some tea.
The Corkscrew is easy when you take the orthodox line, not that any time through 8 is really drama free. It's blind. Brake late, crank over, point at the tree. You can't see the apex until it's behind you. Aim for the oil spot and then for the middle of 9 with the slowness that only a 1.6-liter car on all-season rubber can manage. "Has that oil spot always been there?" I asked. Chris paused, then said, "I think so." I wonder who put it there, and when.
This is the point, 3/4 through the first lap, where the rock-hard all-season tires get some heat in them. That's not a good thing. They start to squirm like fidgety children. You're babysitting them, and they get brattier for the rest of the ride. Not that regaining good discipline is hard. No saint has been more forgiving of the sins of the unworthy than the Mazda Miata. Manhandle it, finesse it, or leave it alone, and it'll get with the program.
Games have helped me realize 11 is really tight, so I slowed down and dropped to second for the first time the whole lap. Up the hill, again, and I was laughing. Chris was laughing. The Million-Mile Miata is impossibly slow, loose, and goofy, but we were having a ball. We didn't stop giggling until we decided to give the tires a rest, four laps later.
As we headed into the pits, I looked at Chris and repeated the mantra that Zach Bowman coined, and that we repeat incessantly whenever we're surprised by this ragged little convertible we've gotten to know.
"It has no right to be this good."
Heading off the track, I peek into the tent one last time. The two new Miatas are sitting there, in the dark at the back of the room, out of the limelight
for the moment. The other guests are packing up, the Mazda employees are peering at their phones, checking email. I'm the only one looking at the cars.
I can't help but think what the trip I just took would be like in the ND, if I could hop in and drive it out of the tent and retrace my steps from
Knoxville to here. For one, I wouldn't have roasted like a luau hog in the hot rock hell north of Vegas, thanks to a much nicer cabin and A/C that actually
worked.
I have high hopes for the ND, mostly because a lot of what the armchair quarterbacks are complaining about as a step backward—the modest decision to
use the SkyActiv 2-liter and to reduce weight—are a return to the plot that was a hair's breadth from being lost in the NC. It's bolder than any
iteration before, without tossing the jinba ittai ethos—a connection between driver and machine—to the wayside.
These are all words. The selling point of our aged NA is the driving experience, one that didn't disappoint even at my dustiest or tiredest. When the road
jigged, the Miata came alive. The true test of the ND will be if it can do the same.
source: http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cult...erey-roadtrip/
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... I miss: My running peeps in Tampa, running barefoot @ Clearwater Beach and First Choice BBQ, in Brandon. In So Cal I miss: The Malibu Canyons, CA 33 and In & Out Burgers ! I'm from Tampa, if I was from Tampa Bay, I'd be a fish!
