Today’s Post by Joe Farace
There’s no room to Rhumba in a sports car.—Elvis Presley
Riddle me this: How can you tell if a Mazda Miata is Happy?
Simple: You count the bugs in its teeth.
And if you think that seeing shark’s teeth on an MX-5 is an unusual occurrence, I want to refer you to a post, Our Cars: 1991 Mazda MX-5 Miata on my car photography website/blog. During Mary’s and my search for a Miata for her that she could autocross one Mazda dealer told us, “Bob in Parts is trying to sell his ’93. It’s got a lot of miles —186,000 it turns out—but the engine is all chrome and get this,” he says excitedly, “It has teeth.”
That car was a silver Mazda MX-5 that smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke that Mary passed on it. The white 1991 Miata that we eventual bought had around 96,000 miles and was a great and trouble-free car. She cried a little when we sold it but sometimes cars get sold for reasons you can’t control. This was one of these cases. And while she enjoys the Beetle convertible that she lets me drive occasionally, she still gets wistful about her first generation Miata.