Miatific Bliss in Five Gears

By John Skow

This is embarrassing, but I am standing in front of 14 Carrots, the health- food store, looking at a little blue convertible and thinking, "Aw, isn't it cute?" I do not usually gurgle about cars. Like other citizens with some mileage on them, I used to love cars, maybe 30 years ago, and then I grew up. Now when a hunk of junk that cost twice the price of my first house needs new front shocks at only 120,000 miles, my feeling is bitter resentment. Americans hate their cars.

"Love your car!" The young woman, who is quite pretty, has skipped across the main street of my New Hampshire town to say this. "Thanks," I tell her modestly, wondering if it would be all right to twirl my mustache. I borrowed this Mazda MX-5 Miata three days ago. People edge away when I park my usual vehicle, a large black four-wheel-drive Ford plow truck with red pinstriping and air horns. But the Miata gets passersby smiling and talking: teenagers, old couples, a fellow dressed in muscles and a camouflage shirt at a tire store, bicyclists in bicycle suits. Other conspicuous cars are costly and imposing and draw hate waves, as they are intended to. Decent householders glare, knowing you couldn't own the thing unless you were a drug dealer or a peculating corpocrat. The Miata is relatively cheap, if one of your relatives is a rich uncle. Its base price is under $14,000, though optional doodads push the price to $15,000 or more. Beyond that, surcharges that dealers are able to pile on because of the car's popularity average $4,000 (up to $8,000 in California, says a Mazda official). But why are we talking about money?

Having charge of a Miata is like taking a puppy for a walk. People want to pat its stubby little muzzle (which looks as if it is not quite ready for the big world, since it lacks a conventional front bumper). They tell you about sports cars they owned, and when they get to the part where they sold the old XK 120, they look stricken.

Yes, yes. Now sit down, says the voice of reason. Have a nice cup of decaf tea. Try to remember that a car is not a puppy. True, the dreamer muses, but if adult automobiles bred and had young, the result might be a Miata: short nosed, rounded and soft looking; mischievous, with a funny, not quite serious growl.

Ah, the growl. The exhaust note, as you wind the little, high-revving, 116- h.p. engine up through five gears, sounds like one-fourth of a Ferrari. Or, memory says, like an old MG-TC or Porsche Speedster. Which is to say, cunningly tuned to bring a grin but not a police cruiser. This is true, more or less, of the Miata's performance. Steering is solid and very quick; cornering is flat, without sway or slosh; and straight-out acceleration (0 to 60 m.p.h. in 8.6 sec.) is brisk but not pavement scorching.

It is a toy, of course. There is enough room in its midget trunk for two tennis rackets and one can of balls. Is it a yupmobile? A delicate question, but the answer is not really. Yuppies lack a sense of nonsense. They buy BMW or Saab Turbo convertibles, ragtop versions of sedans that are irreproachably expensive and slightly stodgy. If you must pick up your elderly aunt, her Doberman and her scuba gear at the airport, you can manage it in one of these. In the Miata, no.

One requirement of a proper sports car is that there be a lot of technical gibberish to discuss with envying friends. The Miata has a rigid, monocoque body, designed solely to be a roadster (there is no sedan model); a 16-valve, four-cylinder engine with cast-iron block and double-overhead cams, redlined at 7,000 r.p.m.; independent, double-wishbone suspension with anti-roll bars; disk brakes all around; a lovely, five-speed, manual, close-ratio gearbox; and rack and pinion steering. And, yes, the top can be raised or lowered with one hand, from inside the car, though your other hand should not be holding a cup of coffee.

Now lower yourself down, down, behind the leather-covered wheel (which contains an air bag, though there is none for your passenger; sorry about that, Darleen). Turn on the engine and vroom it a couple of times. Adjust your cowboy hat. Blast off. Note the Magic Fingers feeling. This is called "road feel"; it lets you know you are in a sports car and keeps the seat of your pants on its toes. Turn the wheel, but not much, and note that the car turns too, right now. Glance upward, and sense the sun spilling through the blur of green-to-red-turning maple leaves.

Mazda will import 20,000 Miatas (in three colors, red, blue or white) by the end of the year, and an additional 40,000 next year. Virtually all the '89 quota is spoken for, though tales, possibly tall, persist of buyers calling Mazda dealers in the distant boonies ("Ay-yuh, we got one uh them"), flying thousands of miles and driving off in Miatific bliss. St. Louis resident Judy Buchmiller placed an ad in the Los Angeles Times offering her $16,000 red Miata for $32,000. Similar ads appear every day listing owners in such states as Kansas, Nebraska and Michigan, most of whom expect buyers to pay delivery charges.

But never mind sufferers who don't have one. Drive around a college campus a couple of times. Do a circuit of your shopping center. Raise your cowboy hat and say "Howdy" whenever eye contact is made. Then whoosh away in a cloud of envy.

With reporting by S.C. Gwynne/Detroit and Tara Weingarten/Los Angeles