Presidential Address

– Vince Tidwell

Here’s a new theory I’ve come up with that I call the Rule of Three: If more than three things are wrong with your Miata and you don’t fix them, you will, within the span of six months, become so disenchanted and annoyed by your car that you might even consider getting rid of it.

Yikes!

I came to this conclusion after decades of laziness and automotive frustration. From the age of 25, I’ve had the pleasure of keeping the number of cars I’ve owned equal to the number of years I’ve lived. In reviewing the cars I’m glad I’m rid of, my disenchantment was rarely due to some design flaw. Instead, it was the result of some mechanical failure some mechanical failure which broke the relationship up. In the end, of course, that meant I was to blame, seeing as to how I was the caretaker in question; in essence, I had let the machine down. A deeper thinker might even say I was as disgusted with my own inaction as I was with the cars themselves.

When something acts up on your Miata, it’s performing less than expected. Seeing that happen over and over again only serves to accentuate the problem, for each time you experience it your negative emotions are reinforced. At some point the discontent will even begin to affect your whole attitude toward the car. You might even find yourself taking one of your OTM (Other Than Miata) cars on a short jaunt. These are warning signs not to be ignored.

As my ’90 Miata ages and I occasionally jump in a ’99, the items I need to pay attention to on my older car come right into focus. It’s amazing what we allow ourselves to become accustomed to. A rear window that’s a bit foggy, a door pull that’s gotten loose, that nick in the paint, a floormat that’s past its useful life—they all sort of fade into the background. However, they do add up to diminish the quality of your Miata experience.

I implore you to set aside some time to either fix or have fixed all these niggling problems right now. You only get so many Miata hours a week, so why spend them driving around with problems? One item can be overlooked; two you can usually work around; but when the list grows to three, it is time to “restore” your car. There is nothing on these machines that can’t be fixed, and parts are cheap.

Here’s the argument: If you let your car go so far that you’re in danger of falling out of love with it, you’ll end up selling it. Before you do that, of course, you’ll repair any obvious flaws or defects to get the most money from the next guy. So the new owner gets to enjoy all those new parts, while you were always annoyed with your car because it needed new parts. How kind of you: You’ve just treated the next guy to something you wouldn’t do for yourself!

Wouldn’t it make more sense to accept that you’ll have to do some work anyway, then enjoy the fruits of those labors yourself? It’s a false economy to do anything else.

If you really do get in a pinch, calculate the sales tax alone on a new Miata. Dollars to donuts, that figure alone would fix up your current car nicely. I’m certainly not dismissing the attraction of a brand-new MX5, but you should be moving up for the right reasons—not because you’ve neglected your current car. If that’s the case then your new one will start to look ratty soon enough anyway. Get in the habit of keeping those maintenance accounts short, and you won’t fall into this vicious cycle.

“Physician, heal thyself” is what I’ll be hearing from any of you that have seen the Club’s ’94 Laguna Blue at our Tech Sessions. We’ve had a small tear in the leather driver’s seat for two years now—a tear that even started happening while the car warranty and the fix was free for the asking. Fortunately, that’s the only flaw the car has, besides a few nicks and scratches and some squeaky antiroll-bar bushings.

Uh, oh—that’s three! Guess I need to get out to the shop one of these days….

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