Miatas Out the Wazoo!

My  Car, Parked at the Phillips Motel. Ain't it Purty?

The Miata is the best-selling two-seat convertible in history-- more than 900,000 have been sold worldwide since 1990, yet I just don't see that many on the road. But for two days in Western North Carolina Miatas were everywhere. They came in every possible color, and many were customized.

I assume that dragon is a stick-on.

Many Miatas had car club logos. Check out the roll bars in the photo below.

Some of the later-model Miatas had build-in motor-driven hard tops.

Shades of the Ford Sunliner!

There were quite a few MazdaSpeed Miatas-- those are the cars that came factory-equipped with turbochargers.

First generation Miatas like mine produce between 115 and 133 bhp (depending upon the year; versions before 1994 have a 1.6-Liter engine, 2004-2007 models have the larger 1.8 L. That's not a lot of power (a Civic of the same era has around 101 bhp and weights about 500 more than a Miata), but as you can see if you watched the video in my Deal's Gap post, it's a zippy car. A turbo adds around 30 bhp, and some turbo Miatas produce as much as 240 bhp.

Here's a photo I took at Fontana. That's a third-party turbocharger, I think.

This Miata had, can you believe it, a V-8 engine.

There are no end of third-party speed enhancements, but my car is fast enough as it is. Almost.

People personalized their cars in lots of ways.

There were no end of vanity license plates. Most were about zoom-zoom.

I passed so many Miatas on the roads my arms got weary from waving. Fortunately, my first-generation Miata comes with a built-in greeting. A quick flick of the light switch makes the headlights pop up for five seconds or so.

This, my reader, is the end of this blog's Miata arc. My next post will be, surprise!, about Pine Lake.