Open road? Check.
Top of second gear? Check.
Weird ridge in the tarmac? Check.
Poorly matched shocks? Check, check, check.
We are cleared for take off.
Or at least that was the monologue as the Miata initiated a sideways twerk over the aforementioned irregularity in the road surface. In this car, on this part of the road, there are two choices. Hold off on throttle application until you’re well past to avoid the sickening pogo action of the R-Package Bilsteins on an undulating surface or….whoop over it and just deal. Miss Daisy isn’t riding passenger today, or ever, so whooping is the most often the choice.
Editor’s Note: Perhaps you won’t notice, but as we revive this blog we’re digging through some of the drafts that were never finished. This one sat for about seven years, which may account for tone inconsistencies.
I’m in love with my local roads. Every commuter, lost soul, and occasional overweight cyclist has contributed to its current condition. The surfaces are pockmarked with divots, undulations, and cracks formed over the years since the last time it was re-paved, and you can spot the visitors by the way they follow the road. Cutting the wrong curve and nailing a pothole, or getting caught out by a turn whose radius sharpens quicker than the visual lead would suggest. You learn, through countless miles, which curves you can hug the inside, and which it would be wise to hug the double yellow to avoid the gravel slide the county has yet to clear two years on. Enough spine-compressing interactions with the same bump train you to wait a few extra yards before turning into the fourth corner after the second hairpin.
This familiarity comes into play whenever I’m feeling out a car that’s new to me. Whether it’s a completely worn out E30 or a lower mileage S2000, I head out to my stretch of road to get acquainted. From that point, I start thinking about what I would change. With this R Package Miata, like all the Miatas that came before it, I quickly put together a mental list of what it “needed” for maximum enjoyment. But it seemed a shame to tear apart a cared-for, reasonably low mileage ’94 R for my enjoyment. So many of these cars are modified beyond recognition or reasonable daily use, why I would subject a stock R Package to the same fate as my previous beaters? Do special editions matter? Do special edition Miatas matter?
No. Or at least not to me, and while I realized that during my ownership a more important question occurred to me: Do I even like Miatas anymore?
Maybe? This was, supposedly, one of the best NA Miatas out of the box. Stiffer suspension from the factory, a manual rack, again factory and not the de-powered nonsense many of us did in driveways, the stronger 1.8L engine, a Torsen LSD, none of the power windows that tend to gunk up, and the “R-pkg” lips and spoilers that the vast majority of owners retrofit at some point. On paper, this should have been the ticket, the answer to “what car can I buy, leave alone, and just enjoy on my favorite roads?”
In reality though, this car and I did not get along. The manual steering didn’t seem to add much feel, but it had the lovely combo of much more weight and a slower ratio. That last factor meant needing to shuffle steer in tighter corners in ways I hadn’t previously in order to avoid punching my knees. The stiffer suspension, which I had experienced in another R Package but had written off as an aberration, was terrible on a backroad. The changes over a base Miata mostly resulted in a ride that never settled down, but still had considerable body roll and would seem to pack down onto the bump stops until you got back to a smooth, straight section. And of course with NAs, there’s always the 1.8L BP. In a car with this little power, the additional ~20lb ft. of torque over the B6ZE in the earlier cars is noticeable. But there is also a noticeable change in character for the worse. While still being a small engine the BP loses the revvy nature of its 1.6L sibling, and you find yourself making progress but willing/praying/cursing for something more interesting to listen to.
I should have known all of that before buying the car, and I did, but it was hard to pass up the chance to prove myself wrong. This ended up being another dent in the Miata armor for me, but it was also a box checked. Having decently sampled every NA configuration there was I needn’t worry I was missing anything going forward. Even better, since this was one of the nicer Miatas I’d come across, and an R Package of course, it sold pretty quickly and for what I wanted. Can you guess what replaced it?
