bvl

There are dozens of these threads but I'll bite as I drink my java.

On the street, if you are well aware of driving dynamics, weight is the enemy.

What makes the miata fun is how tossable it is *without* getting into trouble nearly as quickly as you do in a higher HP car.

Bake a turn in a miata and you can very easily correct it with steering and throttle modulation. You can get the tail out gently: its not going to bite you hard as many cars do once you start losing things. That is the tossable feeling many folks reference.

The Z's tuning of stability control is the weakest feature of the car. Its on/off: you can't coax a bit of tail out of it, nor is there a looser sport mode. That is the one thing I would change about the Z. It handles well for its platform, but its a bit nose heavy. It performs as well as much more expensive cars but does so with kind of a meh feeling (good steering, not fantastic, good suspension, not fantastic: its a darn good package, just not fantastic IMHO)

For us, the Z (roadster) is a GT car: very heavy. I mean...look at the size of the Z's arse. Its huge Red line 2 shifts and you are going really fast.

Red line 2 shifts in a lower powered car, and you spend more *time* hearing the sweet sound of the engine before you are illegal.

This is the difference between driving a quick vs a fast car. The Z is a fast car, no doubt. A light miata is a quick car. Our Cayman 2.7 is a very quick car where as the S is a fast car and I experience similar gratification driving the lower powered p car around the back roads: you can hammer on it without going too illegal.

With miatas, you either get it or you don't. And that's fine if you don't get it, just don't dismiss it because some men have performance issues and insist on dis'ing them instead of having a good ole time.

You can get plenty of strange driving a miata

- b