Well said! One of my best friends recently bought a used Miata after
spending a good bit of time in the pass. seat of my Spit last summer. It is
the perfect car for him as he has the mechanical sympathy of a monkey with
no thumbs. It is his only car, and so far he has put the top down every
sunny day that it has been over 50 degrees! He does keep threatening that
he will have the top down AND the A/C on when it gets really hot though!
Here in Maine, Miata owners wave just as much as LBC owners anyway - any
car with a cloth top takes a certain breed (or certain lunacy) in this
climate.
-Kevin Rhodes
Freddy the Spitfire
(77 chassis, trimmed as 74, 69 1300 motor)
Claudette the Peugeot 505 (a grande French dame)
One unnamed 84 VW Jetta GLI (loved dearly, but never gained a name)
At 11:19 AM 3/31/1998 -0500, tomwalling@pvh.com wrote:
>
>Fellow SOLers:
>
>As the weather improves up here in the northern reaches, we will again be
>confronted by a miasma of Miatas. I know, I know, they all drive around
>with their tops up, the oil doesn't leak, they stole the design from Lotus,
>they have the gall to paint them BRG, they run without having to tinker with
>them, etc. (I may have missed something here -- feel free to vent on your
>own). I just want to hop in here with my own observations about this
>phenomenon. First, in case nobody has noticed, the Brits aren't making
>sports cars any more! You know what that means? it means that we aren't
>really rivals! Second, as the latest Moss Motoring mag points out so well,
>all of our cars were considered inferior upstarts by other marque owners
>when our cars were in production. Third, the best way to insure that the
>hobby will turn gray and die is to discourage newcomers. Think of the Miata
>as an "entry point" to the world of modest powered high performance driving.
> After getting the "bug" many Miata owners might want to find out what the
>"original" experience was like. This is the future for our hobby, not those
>slack-jawed 4WD jocks, the NASCAR wannabes with their obnoxious Camaros, or
>the skippers of those vans who can't seem to park them in just 1 spot. The
>Miata is like a "gateway" drug -- it leads to more serious stuff.
>
>So, I just wanted to offer this up as a "pre-emptive strike" as it's almost
>time for this List's long annual string about how awful those Miatas are.
> Instead of snubbing them, let's accept them as "fellow travelers" and give
>a wave as we go past. Even if they don't wave back the first couple of
>times, it's good training for them to be aware of the larger world of sports
>cars. "Can't we all just get along?"
>
>
>
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