Sevenar First gear | Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Middle Georgia Posts: 69 |
Sevenar
First gear
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Middle Georgia
Posts: 69
The story? Well, dunno how far back to start, but I suppose I'll skip being totally screwed by the economic downturn and the divorce and get to the primarily relevant bits.
Finding myself back at home, caring for an aging parent, and not really knowing anyone in town, I started watching a lot of television again. One day I happened to flick past BBC America and Top Gear was on. I was never a "petrolhead" as they call them over there, but their absolute love for cars and the crazy stunts they pulled driving them got me longing to get in on the fun of driving. Well, it's all well and good that Bugatti will give them a Veyron to play with, but it's not exactly like I could call up BMW and ask to play around with an M3 or anything, so I decided I'd do a little research and find out what I could *reasonably* expect to get.
Enter the Jinba-Ittai wunderwagen--the Miata. Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson said he only gave it five stars out of five because they wouldn't let him give it fourteen, and that it was all the fun of a Ferrari without the exorbitant price tag. Then he drove a beat-up old NA model from Iraq to Bethlehem, across the desert, and part of the way on 3 cylinders to boot! With a million sold worldwide, it had to have something going for it, obviously. Sign me up!
Just one problem. I was always firmly in the camp of "we live in the space age--let the car shift itself!" Always had automatics, never saw much use in a stick shift except for some sort of Neanderthal-grunting "REAL man" skill, along the lines of getting into a fistfight over a football game, seeing the point of a Harley-Davidson, or smoking yourself to death. "Oh, it gives you more control!" Over what? Parallel parking on a hill? I've managed thirty years of driving without once having an automatic gearbox bore me to death--or give me a second's worth of pause on any hill in the world.
Still, the fact that the manual refuses to die (along with Macintosh computers) did demand closer scrutiny. Looking at it as more of a survival skill than some sort of rite of passage helped a bit--what if you were stranded on the far side of the world and the only way out was a stick-shift? So why not go ahead and see what all the fuss was about and THEN make an informed, enlightened decision?
Which, again, pointed to the Miata. Never owned a convertible, either. Another point for the Miata! From what I'd read, it was all the fun of driving a motorcycle without being inevitable death on a stick. (Side note: there have been four motorcycle-related deaths in my town over the past month, and zero Miata-related ones. Hmm.)
Now, having lost my job two years ago, and pretty much living on unemployment, I couldn't really afford a Murcielago or an Aston-Martin DB9. But I could scrape together about four grand and hit Craigslist.
After a month, I found one. I was hoping for an NA M-Edition (for the extras) or an NB LS (better handling, supposedly). Found both, but the guy wanted $1000 too much for his '97 M. So, even though it had a few problems, I managed to haggle the price of the 2000 down below my limit, and off I drove!
Well, not quite. Off my girlfriend drove, since I obviously couldn't. I'm not stupid; I had studied the whole stick-shift thing, done countless hours in one on the Gran Turismo 5 videogame, etc., but theory is no substitute for practical experience. She had test-driven it with me and said the transmission was just fine, and that it was really fun to drive.
So after a few gentle lessons from my sweetie, THEN off I drove. And she was absolutely right. So was Jeremy Clarkson. This sweet little machine handles like nothing else. It's like driving a go-kart! My deep emerald-green, tan-leather sports car just makes me want to drive and drive and drive.
Yes, it has 182,000 miles on it. Yes, it's going to cost me a chunk of money to get the EGR valve scraped out of all the gunk of ten years. Yes, there's a five-inch tear in the top below the rear window. But it still handles like a dream, the engine happily purrs when I wind through the gears, and it still turns heads--probably to stare at the grinning idiot behind the wheel, but still...
Three days in, and I'm firmly in love with the MX-5.
Not so sure about the stickshift though. Jury's still out. Hills suck. 
Regards,
Sev
