The Pick of the Day is a 1997 Mazda MX-5 Miata listed for sale by a Pennsylvania dealership on ClassicCars.com.
I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the simple things. Long walks with the pinks and oranges and purples of the Arizona sunset above me are almost therapeutic. Reading a paperback novel (currently on “Riders of the Purple Sage” by Zane Grey) before bed is now a cherished luxury. While I enjoy the comfort, convenience, and safety features of new vehicles, I definitely see the appeal of older, simpler cars such as this 1997 Mazda MX-5 Miata from the final year of the first generation.
Even budget-friendly modern vehicles are packed an impressive array of comfort, convenience, and safety features. My Hyundai Sonata, although near the beginning of the trim level spectrum, has digital gauges, a wide infotainment system touchscreen, blind-spot monitoring, and a rearview camera with rear cross-traffic alert. And if I push the right buttons, my car will maintain my chosen cruising speed and following distance, and even keep me centered in my lane. Those are all nice to have, but they’re also constant sources of stimulation.
This Miata is lovably old-school (strange how that term can now be applied to cars from the late 1990s). There are no screens torching your retinas at night, no mirror-mounted lights flashing to get your attention if someone is in your blind spot, no means of making it effectively drive itself. It’s just you and the car. On a perfectly sunny day, you throw back the manual black soft top. You wind up the naturally aspirated 1.8-liter I4 to extract as much of its 133 horsepower and 114 lb-ft of torque as possible. When you spin the tach needle to redline, you work your left foot and right arm to shift the five-speed manual into the next gear. If you want to listen to something other than the AM/FM/cassette stereo, you can get two earfuls of the sound that Mazda engineers so painstakingly curated through listening to over 100 recordings of exhaust notes. And you can do that over and over again because this modern classic only has 16,794 miles on it.
That’s not to say this Miata is a no-frills machine. Judging by its appearance, this Classic Red specimen has air conditioning and seems to have been equipped with the Touring Package, which contains aluminum alloy wheels, door map pockets, a leather-wrapped steering wheel connected to power steering, and power windows and mirrors. At some point in the past 27 years, the original upholstery was replaced with red and black leather.
So what do you have to do to get your hands on this low-mileage, lovably straight-forward machine? That’s simple, too: Pay $17,000. Then start driving.
Click here to view the listing for this Pick of the Day on ClassicCars.com.
Source: www.classiccars.com