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Fun with topless beauties!

By on October 1, 2008

Occasionally, I meet ex-pat parents in Tokyo and Yokohama who tell me that this column is not relevant to them because they haven’t got a parking space. Accordingly, I think it only fair to devote this month’s pages to those who do not have a single parking space… but have two.

Furthermore, I’m going to assume that one space is already occupied with something eminently practical for a Tokyo Family: a Honda Odyssey, a Toyota Estima, or some other people carrier that can competently get the kids to school, the shopping back from Costco, and even ferry your folks off to Nikko when they visit, but while doing so has never once set your pulse racing.

What you need is a sports car, the classic definition of which is: two doors, two seats, no roof. And since you’re in Japan, it would be a crime to not own at least one of the two sports cars pictured here, even if just for a while. In white, we have the Mazda MX-5, a.k.a. the Miata or Eunos Roadster, officially the best-selling sports car of all time. Almost a million MX-5s have rolled out of Mazda’s factory in Hiroshima over the past 19 years, in three distinct generations. Due to pedestrian safety concerns, the pop-up headlights of the original gave way to fixed glass lenses a decade ago, but the undeniably pretty series two was still considered a “chick’s car” by men who had never driven one. Then came the series three in 2006. Wider, butcher, and a whopping 150kgs heavier than the original, largely thanks to modern-day safety essentials such as airbags and reinforced doors, Mazda upped the car’s engine capacity to 2 liters to compensate. The bigger motor kept the new MX-5’s power to weight ratio on par with its ancestors, but also stacked the little Mazda up against another 2 liter sports car, the grey shark you see here.

Honda’s S2000 has been less of a sales sensation, largely because it costs $10,000 more than the Mazda but that extra million yen buys you one of the best motors built today. The original 1999 S2000 could muster a simply astonishing 250 ponies’ worth of power, more than any other two liter engine in the world, including the new MX-5’s 170hp lump. No doubt that on paper at least the MX-5 is now punching above its weight, and in a straight fight with an S2000, would take a beating. Sure enough, on every standard measurable, be it a 0-100kph sprint, top speed, or circuit lap times, the Mazda emerges a bloody mess, but on another plane, one that is impossible to measure with a stop watch, the MX-5 emerges victorious.

Every year, motor journalists get together to vote for their car of the year, and time after time the Mazda MX-5 walks away with the Most Fun to Drive award. Sure, it’s not as quick as an S2000, and doesn’t handle quite as well as a Lotus Elise, but fun factor? It’s got it in spades. This is not hard to quantify. It is impossible, so I enthuse you to take one for a test drive, preferably somewhere near a mountain pass, or racing circuit. But don’t stop there; be sure to borrow an S2000 too. They are very different animals, these two. The Mazda is an eager little whippet, delighted to obey your every command as it darts up a road. The Honda is what it appears to be. A streamlined shark that will relentlessly hunt down whatever prey should appear before it. I like sharks, and I like whippets, which is why this month, I’m going to abstain from choosing a favorite, and go and get myself a third parking space.

You, however, should get down to your local Honda and Mazda dealers sharpish. Sales of the S2000 have nose dived over the last two years and Honda’s bean counters are sharpening their axes. The MX-5 in its current form won’t be with us for long either as Mazda has decided that it is time for some serious cosmetic surgery. But remember, the car has already endured two facelifts; many more, and it may join Michael Jackson and Joan Collins as a reminder that messing with a perfectly cute face rarely works out well.

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