When Mazda comes, the sun rises. Or vice versa. Every year during the fresh season, the gaze falls longingly on the range of convertibles, and there is sobering evidence. The decrease is more visible than your own spring diet. Where Golf and Astra and Barchetta and 208 had to capitulate to the cost killers long ago, Mazda indulges itself and us undauntedly with an MX-5. It has been driving unchanged for what feels like a hundred years.

Holger Appel

Editor in the economy, responsible for "Technology and Engine".

  • Follow I follow

If you measure more than 1.80 meters, you can look better over the windshield frame than under it. To put it bluntly and magnificently, this roadster is a small miracle, in fact it can be used for nothing but a good mood. Of course, as we all know, you can never get enough of that. This is how the 2-liter four-cylinder engine comes to life, is allowed to throw its 184 hp into the balance and turn the organ up to 7000 rpm. Shifting is done by hand, a matter of honor, as jagged as nowhere else, connoisseurs know that

It's always tight in the MX-5

The crisp guy then storms forward, only 1100 kilograms can be kept going. To understand, because the times turn upstream: This is not the weight of the battery, this is the weight of the whole car. 6,5 seconds fly up to 100, 219 km / h are possible, no one rushes so quickly, where the journey is the goal. So it actually happened to us to burn only 6,5 liters of Super on average, although the WLTP standard consumption is given as 6,9 liters. We ask for your indulgence, it will not happen again.

Whether you absolutely have to mount 205/45 R-17 tires on black BBS rims is a question of taste (rather yes) and the intervertebral disc (rather no). The MX-5 is always tight, shelves are in short supply, and the handbrake is offset in the middle right, not tragic, hardly anyone drifts through the pull on the lever today anyway. Hardly any.

Switches are switches, knobs are knobs, buttons are buttons, that's how practical the lightness of being can be. The roof raises with one hand who is still jointed, and before the rain shower it is closed again, even before the electric servomotors elsewhere have processed the impulse. Mazda is demanding 41,400 euros for the Homura Skyactiv version with pretty much everything. Especially with a smile, all day.