Hi Miataphiles!
The Sunday night before last I was taking a nice cruise to the grocery store with the top down, on a quiet two-lane road under canopies of oak trees, where the speed limit is 40 MPH. I had just come over a little hill, when suddenly I saw a flash of headlights in the rear-view mirrors, then an eye-blink later a screech of brakes, and another eye-blink later KAWHAM as the Ford truck which had barreled over the hill behind me at about 90 MPH failed to completely clear my car in his attempt to swerve around me.
If I had had my arm hanging out the window I'd be typing this with one hand. The collision wiped out my driver's side rear quarter panel and the door and the front quarter panel and broke the tie rod on the driver's side front wheel. Say, by the way, y'all truck drivers? ever hear the phrase "handles like a truck"? Yeah, that's you! What I'm trying to say is YOUR GOD DAMN TOP-HEAVY FORD TRUCK IS _NOT_ A SPORTS CAR, IT CAN'T CORNER/CAN'T STOP/CAN'T SWERVE, SO DON'T BE BE A COMPLETE DICK AND TRY TO DRIVE IT AS THOUGH IT WERE! Anyway he took off at about a thirty degree deflection to the left, rooted up about a hundred and fifty feet of hogwire fence, and ended up front-end mudded-down in a cowfield, with both air bags blown and the front wheel busted over parallel with the ground. What do you think the first thing out of his mouth was? "I'll pay you cash, just don't call the cops!" Well...
So say goodbye to my trusty old '93 white B-package! I bought it on May
1, 2000 with 50,000 miles on it, and drove it until April 30, 2006 with 142,000 miles on it. The air-conditioner was non-functional, I'd have had to get that fixed to endure next summer in Tampa, and the top was cracked at the edges and surely would have needed replacement within the year, but still it was beyond a doubt the best car I ever owned, even better than my oil-injected two-stroke '67 Saab Monte Carlo. I never gave any car of mine a name, but since that seems to be en vogue for Miata owners I was thinking at first of calling it "Sadi" (not a girl's name but after Sadi Carnot, as it achieved 28-29 MPG, which is three times better than my work truck.) But "Sadi" didn't stick, and it was just "my car" until a few months back when I found that someone had put two bullet hooles in it while it sat in my driveway. My son, an aficionado of rap music (ouch my sufferin' ears), thought that was awesome, and beseeched me not to repair them. Now once upon a time, world-famous poet and musical performer 50 Cent allegedly got shot nine times, which as all fandom knows is the fount of his epic, almost overwhelming coolness. Two gunshot holes isn't as cool as nine but it's pretty cool; thus, by arithmetical proportion, my car acquired the name "11 Cent."All you Miata brothas, pour a forty of OE on the ground in memory of your fallen homie 'Leven. >:-(
Well, after an extremely stressful week and a half, I'm finally rid of the rental car (a Dodge Neon SVT with a slushbox and way too much power!) and I'm back on the road again in, what else, you guessed it, another white Miata. This one's a '99 with 63,000 miles, a very base package (non-electric antenna! windows you raise and lower with hand cranks! no cruise control except the one attached to my right ankle! yes!). In 600 miles, I've averaged a hair over 28 MPG. Style-wise, it has the original simplest, cleanest headlight lenses they ever put on an NB, and no body kit, fog lights, spoiler, none of that crap that I don't want and would pay to get rid of. My '93 had fairly new 195-55/14 T1-Ses; this '99 came with 195-50/15 Toyo Proxes 4s. The first few day I drove on them I thought they really sucked, until I finally had time to check the tire pressures which were from 18 PSI to 22 PSI! After I pumped them all up to 28 PSI the handling is much, much nicer, but it seems like the Proxes 4s let go in fast turns a lot sooner than the T1-Ses would. Oh well, when I finally wear them out Kaufmann Tires down the street offers a pretty decent price on T1-Rs.
I like the increment in power. It feels exactly like the '93 1.6L, except it's like I've got about an inch-and-a-half extra throttle. When I shove it down into that bonus inch-and-a-half it growls real pretty and really moves out! There's this one off-ramp I drive every day where if the lights are green I used to come around the sharp corner full-throttle and gun it to the next light a few hundred feet away; by the time I'd get through that second intersection I'd be just up to the speed limit of 45. I did that turn the other day and hit the second light doing about sixty. Sweet, but I'm going to have to learn a little more restraint with this new Miata or else I just know the Hillsbo po-pos are gonna be all over my ass.
The first thing I bought for it was a custom bumper sticker, so this Miata's already got a name: the LISPmobile. See for yourself: