Miata

Perplexing BAT Find

As with every Monday when I wander over to Bring A Trailer to pick out the three vehicles that strike my fancy, there are always somewhere between six and seven hundred auctions running. This means that there are plenty that could make the list but don’t.

This week there was a very low mileage 2003 Miata that sold for $13,100. That might sound like a lot of money for a 19-year old car, but with the way car prices are right now and I had to replace my current 19-year old Miata I probably wouldn’t have a problem with that sum.

I would have a problem with this particular example though, the color. Both Donna and I thought it was the ugliest color we had ever seen on a Miata. And we know from experience, we had one as loaner back in October 2003 when our ’95 was in for a timing chain replacement. I was pretty merciless in my condemnation of Splash Green – New Miata In The Garage.

So what was especially weird for me was the comment section of the auction, the first several posts from when it was listed are all in praise of the color! Some even considered it one of the best colors the car ever came in, yikes! All I can think of was that everyone was being polite, or maybe people are now so used to seeing nearly all the vehicles on the road in a monochromatic palette that runs from white to black.

Splash Green was not very popular back in 2003. While we were looking at new cars back then, we found ourselves at a Mazda dealer in Charleston, SC and as proof I offer this little story – One Last Splash Green Story. We did end up buying a 2003 Miata later that year, but it was the real best color ever on a Miata, Garnet Red.

Impeding Oil Change

The Miata is way due for an oil change. As a matter of fact we are about 2 weeks shy of a year since the oil has been drained out of it. Back then it was done not in my driveway into a collection pan, but along Hwy 140 south of town, in the parking area of a fuel refilling station and on the flat bed of a tow truck.

That length of time shouldn’t be too much of an issue as the car has probably been a total of 1,500 miles since then. And I have tried to go for a drive once a week bringing the car up to operating temperature for a good 15-20 minutes.

Right now I’m shooting for this Saturday or Sunday because the weather is going to be at least in the upper sixties and sunny. The last few days it has been cold and snowy. Not too cold for the snow to accumulate any, it just melted on contact with the ground, but not the kind of weather to lay under a car and change the oil.

11.5 miles of around town running.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 22

 

How High is High?

When I first brought the rental CX-5 home, we went for a little drive around town to get familiar with it and to give Donna a chance behind the wheel.

After we had swapped drivers back to me, Donna said, “I really like being up high.” I replied, “I don’t like it all. I’m too high, I feel like I’m going to tip over. I like being low to the ground.” With a smile on my face I said, “I can barely stand the height of the Mini.” She countered with, “The Miata is too low.”

So when we got home I broke out the tape measure. These are plus or minus an inch or so because I was eyeballing from outside the car door. The Miata measured 8″ Butt To Ground, the Mini came in at 16″ and the CX-5 registered a whopping 25″ of BTG.

On Monday’s we took the Miata out for a drive around town to keep the battery fresh. Today, because it is 4/20, I used the Miata to run to the cannabis store and then later a trip to Jimmy Johns to quench the munchies (just kidding, I was not under the influence then.)

17.7 miles on those three drives.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 16

 

Seasonal Tires

A couple of widely spaces days in the 60’s and I decided to go ahead and take the Mini’s all-season tires off the Miata and put the summer Toyo R1R’s back on. It is still going to be a while before the temperatures are reliably above 50’s in the afternoon for the Miata to get more constant use, but it was nice to have the proper tires and wheels back on the car for todays drive. No more scraping the plastic fender liners with tires on the sharper corners.

The all-seasons are stacked under the workbench in the garage for now. The winter tires remain on the Mini because it may still randomly drop some snow on us for the next few weeks. And we have a trip, that may be taken in the Mini, coming up at the end of the month that requires some high altitude mountain passes that have a higher probability snow chances than here.

10.9 mile errand trip to the Post Office.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 12

 

Plug-In Hybrid Miata?

The current rumors surrounding the next generation Miata is that it will be a plug-in hybrid or all electric. This post is not about that car, it is about the 2002 that we currently have.

We were going to take the Miata to Moore Park yesterday for our afternoon walk, but took the Mini instead. The Miata wouldn’t start, its battery didn’t have enough juice to even turn it over once. Just a click and nothing else.

I know I vowed to take it out once a week, but I looked back and the last time it was driven was 11 days prior. It has been too cold and we had a couple days of a light dusting of snow, so that we hardly left the house. A mere week and a half and the battery was, for all intensive purposes, dead. So I plugged in the battery charger and for this afternoon’s drive to go walking it started right up.

There must a fairly decent dark current somewhere…

16.5 mile round trip to walk 1.8 miles.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 10

 

Top Transitions

I bought a Miata in part because it is a convertible. For the first 20 years of owning one, it was our only car, so it was a daily driver and a weekend toy. Because of Aiken, South Carolina’s weather we would frequently put the top down for the drive to work, have to put it up while at work only to put it down for the drive home. We’d go to the store with the top down and if the sky looked iffy we’d put it back up. Sometimes the top would go up or down a half dozen times in a day. The Miata’s vinyl tops became like sticky tires, they were consumables. We probably averaged a new top every 4 years.

Back in 2005 I decided to keep track of how often I put the top up or down in a given year for fun. Each day when I blogged, at the end of the post, I add a little entry at the bottom that looked like below:

Started up, went down, went up, went back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 27

 
In 2005 the top moved one direction or another almost 400 times, in 2006 524 times, in 2007 a little over 500 times. In 2008 it changed status nearly 400 times before it was replaced in October. I did a little interpolation and figured that the cloth top on the 2003 transitioned 2,235 times until it was replaced. I started counting again from there and kept the count rolling until I quit counting inexplicably at the end of September 2013 at 1262 transitions.

Now that we are retired and living in the less temperate climate of southern Oregon the Mini has become our primary car and the Miata gets taken out only occasionally. And until then, it sits in the garage with the top down practically always, so counting top transitions would not be worth it.

Instead, for 2022, I’ve decided to just count the times the Miata gets driven. From now on when it does go somewhere, I’ll be adding a footnote to the post. Today, with the roads finally cleared of snow from our last storm, I unhooked the trickle charger and picked up our to go lunch order.

8.1 mile trip to Jimmy Johns and back.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 1