Mazda MX-5 1.8i review
by David Finlay (20 October 2006)
When Mazda made its entry-level MX-5 available at a recent press event, several of my colleagues were - to state the case mildly - sceptical. Well, actually, they scoffed. "Why on earth have you brought that?" they asked, and it's fair to say that the car did look a little forlorn sitting next to its jazzier stablemates. But I'm glad Mazda went to the trouble, because to me this is probably the best car in the range.
With a list price of £15,600, it's certainly the cheapest, though not by much. An extra £800 buys you the Option Pack model which gets 16" alloy wheels (the test car has steel rims), a cloth rather than vinyl soft top, two extra audio speakers, audio controls on the steering wheel, stainless steel scuff plates and various bits of interior leather.
Unless your budget is already creaking at the seams at £15,600, the Option Pack seems an obvious thing to go for, if only for the alloys. Now, there is a lot to be said for steel wheels. They are much cheaper than alloys, they're harder to damage and they're easier to repair. But they also look crap on an MX-5, which is no doubt why Mazda does not have a single official photo of a car with them fitted. For customers, the temptation to get rid of them and upgrade to something more stylish must be unbearable.
On the other hand, the basic 1.8i is the MX-5 for people who love driving and don't care what sort of impression they make on others. In this respect it's like the cheaper versions of the first- and second-generation cars built between 1989 and 2005. The base models were always the best, and whatever extra equipment Mazda threw at them invariably made them more attractive but less good.
Same here. If you were to spend more money on an MX-5, what would you get? Well, for a start you could get a two-litre engine producing a maximum of 158bhp, disproportionately more than the 1.8's 124bhp. The 2.0 gives better straightline performance but uses more fuel, and I don't think it will shake anyone's world view that this is the case.
Now, whether the increased performance is important is a matter of taste. Personally, I don't think it is, because the MX-5 is a car for the enthusiast driver rather than one for the sporting driver. Despite the lack of horses, the 1.8 sounds quite fruity, and it pulls well in the mid-range.
On top of that, you can drive it quite hard on interesting roads without overwhelming the rear end, which means that you're controlling the pace yourself rather than being held back by the traction control system on the two-litre models.
Another thing the 1.8i is too cheap to have is a limited slip differential. Hurrah for that, I say. There has never been an MX-5 which needed an LSD. It's a device to improve traction by mechanical means, and most MX-5s (apart from the ones with two-litre engines) have enough traction already.
For technical reasons with which I won't trouble you, an LSD can also cause a slight amount of understeer on turn-in, and this is enough to spoil the beautiful handling balance that is inherent in all MX-5s. Indeed, what, I ask you, is the point of an MX-5 without a beautiful handling balance?
The 1.8i also has a five-speed manual gearbox, which as always is a delight to use. In fact, gearchanging is such fun that I can see why some people want to spend extra money on the six-speed that's available further up the range, but you can have too much of a good thing. Save your money and stick with five.
Similarly, does the 1.8i benefit or suffer from having 205/50 tyres on 16" wheels rather than 205/45 rubber on 17s? It benefits, to be sure - there's less grip but a much better feeling of what's going on between tyres and tarmac. And the same applies, yet again, to the suspension: why go for the sporty set-up when the standard one is not merely adequate for the car but actually makes it better?
And that, just to drive home a point you must already have appreciated by now, is the whole essence of the 1.8i. There is no damning with faint praise here. It would not be correct to say that the entry-level MX-5 could be improved with the more expensive equipment available elsewhere in the range but is still reasonably okay without it. On the contrary, it's the lack of those features which makes it a superior car to drive.
Whether it's also a superior car to own is something else again. Buyers will certainly be attracted by the bigger engine, the sports suspension, the six-speed gearbox and the LSD, partly no doubt because it's nice to be able to show that you can afford them. But this particular car proves that with the MX-5, now as always, simple is best.
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