To Summarise

Having spoken with the Honda service guy on my return he told me the new MX5 is sat on the same chassis as the RX8, therefore assuming the RX8 isnt sat on the chassis of the old MX5 this is a relatively big change.

I had the basic 1.8 version. It had good build quality and was very solid, however as mentioned the hard plastic inc the hard plastic steering wheel is a big turn off and would annoy you on a distance run. Mine also had cloth seats, very comfy and grippy but Im sure the leather is even nicer. Therefore I accept the cheap interior seeing I was in the base model.

DSC... Lets talk about that shall we

It copes quite well with it. I gave it a blurt with it on - initially it just lit up, dug itself in a hole and then eventually climbed out, after that it just flashed away constantly and didnt appear to harm performance too much. It was wet out there, small puddles, dry patches.. Not the geat testing ground. I took the twisty route to the garage and with DSC on felt committed until I got massive back end slide / step / twitch on a corner. One of those 'moments'.. therefore DSC is fine in a straight line but if you are going hard into a corner it isnt going to help much. It did help massively on a slightly wet empty roundabout - I could commit to so much more than with it off where it became quite twitchy.

It feels solid, it hugs the road very very well. You feel confident and I was happily throwing her into situations I wouldnt dare do with the S.

POWER..

I was in the rubbish 1.8 base model therefore expected not to have huge power but it was sufficient for the market it targets. This is a <

 

Great analogy

 

Excellent write up

 

loved my mk 2.5 mx5. still not sure about the new one. saw a lovely mk1 this evening which got me looking on autotrader again...