From the August 1991 issue of Car and Driver.
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, what we have here is the Mazda MX-5 Miata Special Edition, replete with BRG (British Racing Green) paint, beige leather seats, beige carpets, and a beige tonneau cover. Unfortunately, the convertible top is, ah, black. Wrong color, guys. And you can’t get a beige soft top, either, although one may be offered in 1992. But not on an MX-5 Special Edition Miata.
But forget about colors for a moment. The rest of the package includes stainless steel door sill scuff plates (a styling cue borrowed from Browns Lane), power steering, a limited-slip differential, and a leather-wrapped steering wheel. We’d have preferred beige leather on the wheel, rather than black, but we’re trying not to say anything more about colors. Both the handbrake grip and the shift knob are fashioned from highly polished wood. The Nardi knob is surrounded by a quarter-inch strip of rubber—a clever flourish that ensures your right hand doesn’t slip and slam into the radio controls. Apart from the seats, all of the beige surfaces in the cockpit are vinyl, not leather.
Inside this limited-edition Miata (“limited” if you regard 4000 of them as limited) are amenities never imagined in the original Lotus Elan. Cruise control (a dubious addition given the Miata’s skittish tracking on Interstates), a CD player, and a pair of stereo speakers mounted in the headrests.
The Special Edition package also includes a beige vinyl tonneau that entirely covers the cockpit. Installing this requires a ten-minute Jane Fonda workout, and you may sacrifice a fingernail as you hitch the thing to the Tenax fasteners at the base of the windshield. But the tonneau is undeniably taut, and the right-side leading edge is thoughtfully covered in black vinyl to eliminate glare in the windscreen. That, of course, encourages you to drive the car in the “split tonneau” mode, with the passenger’s seat covered—an effective way to transport a friend whose face best remains unseen by, say, neighbors. Because one of the tonneau’s fasteners is at the base of the right side-view mirror, you can’t roll up the passenger-side window. The buffeting that ensues beyond 60 mph incites the tonneau to flutter up and down.
Only three options are available: antilock brakes ($900), a detachable hard top ($1400), and a four-speed automatic. Mazda thinks an automatic makes it an entirely separate car (no limited-slip differential here), with a base price of $20,039. You may rest assured we are lobbying for legislation that will make it a federal crime to put an automatic in a Miata.
The MX-5 Special Edition is alluring, but the notion of a 20-grand Miata makes us nervous. The package’s $4949 tariff might be more bearable were the soft top beige (it is black—did we mention this?) or if Mazda got serious about the words “special edition” and commissioned a small run of Miatas with, say, another 20 or 30 horsepower. That would be a Miata worth collecting, never mind its color.
Specifications
Specifications
1992 Mazda Miata Special Edition
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door convertible
PRICE
Base/As Tested: $19,599/$20,999
ENGINE
DOHC 16-valve inline-4, iron block and aluminum head, port fuel injection
Displacement: 98 in3, 1598 cm3
Power (SAE net): 116 hp @ 6500 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 89.2 in
Length: 155.4 in
Curb Weight: 2247 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 8.4 sec
1/4-Mile: 16.5 sec @ 82 mph
100 mph: 27.9 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 9.1 sec
Top Speed: 117 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 189 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.83 g
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 26 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City: 25 mpg
John Phillips first began writing about cars in 1974, at Car Weekly in Toronto. He later worked for Ford Racing, then served for seven years as the Executive Editor of Car and Driver. In the interim, he has written for Harper's, Sports Illustrated, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Conde Nast Traveler. He enjoyed a one-on-one interview with Joe Biden and is the author of the true-crime saga God Wants You to Roll and the memoir Four Miles West of Nowhere. In 2007 he won the Ken Purdy Award for journalism. He lives with his wife, Julie, in the Bitterroot Valley.