The Gadget Tree

Well I’ve owned a plethora of cars in my 26 years and most of them sports cars. I can remember being an eight year old child and being enchanted by an Eagle Talon that was on the used car lot that my dad worked at. I remember the special feeling I had sitting in the seat and envisioning myself wizzing down a winding country road in what felt like a space ship to an 8 year old. There was something about the way the dash and instruments wrapped around the driver, making you feel like you were about to making a bombing run on a Soviet missile installation, instead of just popping out to pick up some groceries, or some other mundane task. At that age I knew nothing about engines and how that particular car wasn’t even a terribly exciting one to drive, I just knew it felt special. In fact by the time I hit puberty and became more interested in girls and partying I totally forgot about cars and just how exciting they could be.

Follow up:

In fact I don’t think it was until after several failed relationships that seemed so important to an adolescent American and after becoming quite tired of the party scene in general that my dormant passion for cars re-awakened. In fact for most of those troubled teenage years I drove my mother’s 1993 Dodge Ram. It was painted an un-glorious shit brown and handled like a tank, but it served it’s purpose for many years. It was in this rear wheel drive potato-farming vehicle that I learned to drive aggressively, in fact using it to run from police on one particularly troubled night. I thank my mother both for sticking by me during those times and also for passing on her skill for driving like a complete maniac. Then, some years later and in another town, my mom and I, who I lived with until my early twenties, purchased a 1995 Acura Integra LS. It was a vibrant red with a black and chrome interior. It had a sunroof, aftermarket taillights, had been lowered drastically and had some other minor modifications such as intake & automatic shift-improver kit. That car handled like nothing I had ever driven before. I remember scraping together change and telling her I was going out to “clean the car” just so I could fill it with a few dollars of gas and take it out for a spirited drive. It was at this point that I developed a love for hard cornering, instead of the typical American passion of straight line speed. All good things come to an end however, and soon we found that we were unable to pay for the car and had to return it, no doubt negatively affecting her credit.

For a while it was back to hoofing it, but then a sympathetic girlfriend who had just purchased a new Kia Sephia decided to give me an old 1993 Mazda 626. This 4-door, automatic grocery getter soon began to irk me and I ended up selling it to buy a $1000 1984 Nissan 300ZX turbo, no doubt making me seem utterly unappreciative of my girlfriend’s gift, which an older and wiser self now realizes was a mistake. The 300ZX ended up being a money pit, a rod bearing blew almost immediately and it ended up sitting in our yard for over a year before eventually being sold for $30 to a scrap yard. This was my lesson, and my penance for not appreciating something.

From that point out it I ended up with heap after heap, all ready more for the salvage yard than the street. In fact far too many junkers to list here without boring my readers to death (barring that I haven’t already succeeded in that). Then, finally, something that was mildly fun to drive again. I picked up a 1984 Honda Prelude from a neighbor of a friend for $475. Nothing worked, and I mean NOTHING. In fact I think the only things that worked were the popup headlights and the motorized sunroof, and despite being a terribly ugly car with faded paint it ran well, had 4 wheel disc brakes and had a nice 5 speed manual transmission. By the end of it’s life with me I had gutted out the interior to save weight and had done a few minor modifications, as well as fixing many things that were broken on it. I speak badly of it, but I can say now that it was one of the best $475 I ever spent. It’s little 1.8L engine was fitted with dual side-draft carbs and with a little intake tweaking revved to the redline with just a tap of the gas pedal. I can remember embarrassing quite a few Toyota Celicas and Mitsubishi Eclipses which brought endless smiles to my face. It revved quick, it burned tires like nothing else and took corners like a champ. That pathetic little primer-colored car concreted my relationship with sports cars for life.

Shortly after that I managed to come across a 1986 Pontiac Fiero for $250. I was told that it needed a new wiring harness, when actually it it only needed a new battery and battery cables. After that it ran like a champ, and despite what you might have heard the Fiero was NOT slow, it did NOT catch on fire, and it was extremely fun to drive. In fact to this date I can honestly say that my little 2.8L V6 Fiero with 4spd manual shift and removable glass sunroof was one of the most reliable cars I’ve owned. In the dry the mid-engine design provided exceptional grip and handling despite the front end being constructed from Chevette parts. In fact at this point I would definitely recommened a Fiero as a cheap and fun sports car. With the V6 it is quite capable of throwing both driver and passenger into the seat quite well and still bending your face off in the corners. My only concern; however, was that in wet weather the back end became extremely squirrelly and you had to drive with the utmost caution, but other than this one issue the car was amazing. It was most entertaining pulling into a fueling station and having people stare at your car trying to figure out what it was. Probably the most common was people asking if it was either a kit car or some kind of exotic, like a Lotus or Ferrari.

Like all good things my affair with the Fiero eventually ended and it was replaced by a short-lived 1987 Toyota Supra turbo which although very fast and fun to drive, developed a terminal problem, the head gasket began to leak. I had gotten this car from the friend of mine that I had gotten into fast cars with right before he tragically wrapped a 2001 pearl white Prelude around a telephone pole at over 100mph. So it was very difficult to do but I had to get rid of it for practicality’s sake.

I then managed to trade this ailing Supra for a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am with a rebuilt 6.6L V8. This poor old thing rattled and squeaked and felt at all times like it was about to fly apart at the seams, but it man what a nice feeling to have so much torque available at the push of a pedal. Then, alas, financial troubles settled in an I was back to driving “normal” cars again. I went through a Honda Civic and two Honda Accords in the space of a year, the last one actually being a pretty fun car. It was a bright red 1990 Accord coupe with a black interior and 5spd transmission. This car got the whole works, rims, front lip spoiler, JDM tails, mp3 cd player, full intake and exhaust, etc and served its purpose for a while, but even with the Tokico suspension I had installed and several other handling modifications I just wasn’t happy with it. That and I had sworn to myself that come summer time I would own a convertible so it got traded in.

Enter the MX-5. I had gone to a lot to look at a 2001 Mustang GT convertible that was going for $12,000, but after being thoroughly unimpressed with it I turned to walk away and literally walked right into a dark green 2000 Mazda MX-5. It was beautiful, but I just knew it would be well out of my price range, boy was I mistaken. As it turned out the MX-5 was only $9,000 and had a paltry 63,000 miles on the clock. I immediately hunted down a sales person and within two days it was mine. I had always been a fanatic for anything that could take corners quickly, and the MX-5 did that like nothing I’d driven before. It was my little “british roadster”, only it was built in Japan so it didn’t fall apart every time I started it up. It was so nice in fact, that even my wife, a person who cares little about sports cars, soon was asking me to teach her to operate a manual transmission just so she could drive it.

It was at this time that I hooked up with some local Miata owners and experienced my first Miata “cruise”. The feeling of blasting down a small twisty road with the wind in my hair was utterly exhilarating, made even more exciting by the image in my rearview mirror of two more Miatas and an S2000 shredding the curves with me. It was near what I’d call a religious experience for a car nut such as myself, I knew from that moment on that no matter what I had to have an MX-5, I was completely addicted to the sensation of driving my little roadster. My relationship with this particular car; however, was not meant to be. After only six weeks of ownership I was rear-ended while waiting in a turn lane and shoved into the truck in front of me. It’s grinning front facia grinned no more, it was totalled. As a little proverbial salt in the wound the $55 custom shift knob I had ordered for the car, and awaited very anxiously, arrived the very day I got home without my little car.

So where does this story leave off? After totaling my previous MX-5 the insurance told me that I would be receiving an extra $1800 above the payoff. I scoured high and low for something else that could provide the joy my poor little Miata had given me and eventually found it again, in another Miata, this time 10 years older with many more miles. Less than a mile from my wife’s childhood home I found a freshly repainted 1990 MX-5 in a bright “smurf” color called Mariner Blue. The air conditioning blows as cold as new, the shocks still feel fresh, and the transmission has recently been replaced. So it seems after all that I get a second chance with an MX-5, and I must say that this older version is growing on me by the day. While the first one I owned felt like a very small sports car this one feels like a very large go kart. I’ve re-affirmed my love for MX-5s and now I couldn’t imagine being without one. My wife isn’t quite as thrilled about this one, but I suppose I can live with that, although it was nice for that short time when I could share my passion with her. So now here I am with a nimble and enjoyable little sports car that puts a smile on my face every time I get into it. Now if only this Louisiana “monsoon season” would let up so I could drop the top more often.

--MaxSideburn