NC MX5 Aurora Blue
Discussion
I'm old enough to remember when the Reader's Cars section of PH was rammed with MX5's, today there's only one in the first 10 pages! Anyway, after 6 months of tootling about in a wallet emptying 330i and 10 months before that in a knackered E91 320D I started hankering after an MX5 again. My last one was an NB I picked up for £700 in lockdown with 12 months MOT and a hard top from a garage owner...come the next MOT there was enough work needing doing that i punted it on for £400. I'd already sold the hardtop for £400 so it was a good outcome.
All the NA's are now priced fairly crazily or full of rust, and the NB's aren't much different. I decided that an NC was the place to be, but never really took to the NC1 and found myself looking at NC2 models. The Aurora Blue on the 20th Anniversary model looks great, and I set out looking for onw within budget and I spotted the one below at £5k with a trader in Newcastle. A day or so later it dropped to £3995 (Christmas week) so I contacted the dealer. He's had it on his books around 3 months and had missed the summer bubble. The budget was around £5k so I figured I'd have enough left to deal with any niggles that might arise on a 13 year old MX5. A couple of weeks later (thanks Mr Lynch) I left Exeter St Davids at 08:30 and got to Newcastle 7 hours later. I managed half the journey home with the roof down before the weather conspired against me. I'm pretty sure Noah came past me on the M5 at one point. A couple of days in and I'm very much enjoying it. It's no NA, but it's good fun, handles well and looks great to my eyes. The seat position is almost as high as the ride height, but hopefully some seat brackets from Jas Performance will help by dropping the seat around 1.5". Suspension may be dropped at some point in the future.
The car was as described and as I'd expected. The paintwork could do with some correction as it's clearly been machine washed many times in it's life. The underneath has some surface crust so will be having that seen to and future proofed imminently. Other than that a missing centre cap and some rather naff number plates (rear is 3d and both have 'MX5 Special Edition' on as well as Mazda logos) were the only stand out items that needed doing.
The trader was a nice old boy who's been trading since the 70's and had over 500 positive feedback on Autotrader. Amusingly, he'd forgotten to MOT the car to give it the 12 months as advertised (I think he'd been enjoying the Christmas break a little too much from what I gathered), so it'll be going to my local independent this week and he'll pick up the tab and will rectify any issues that might arise.
Plans at the moment are limited to tidying it up paintwork and possible wheel refurb. A must is full preventative rust treatments and deal with any rot that might be hidden away (it's an MX5 and it's left the dealership, there's always rust).
Anyway, enough waffle and here's some pics from the advert.[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/eacrhLwL[/url]
All the NA's are now priced fairly crazily or full of rust, and the NB's aren't much different. I decided that an NC was the place to be, but never really took to the NC1 and found myself looking at NC2 models. The Aurora Blue on the 20th Anniversary model looks great, and I set out looking for onw within budget and I spotted the one below at £5k with a trader in Newcastle. A day or so later it dropped to £3995 (Christmas week) so I contacted the dealer. He's had it on his books around 3 months and had missed the summer bubble. The budget was around £5k so I figured I'd have enough left to deal with any niggles that might arise on a 13 year old MX5. A couple of weeks later (thanks Mr Lynch) I left Exeter St Davids at 08:30 and got to Newcastle 7 hours later. I managed half the journey home with the roof down before the weather conspired against me. I'm pretty sure Noah came past me on the M5 at one point. A couple of days in and I'm very much enjoying it. It's no NA, but it's good fun, handles well and looks great to my eyes. The seat position is almost as high as the ride height, but hopefully some seat brackets from Jas Performance will help by dropping the seat around 1.5". Suspension may be dropped at some point in the future.
The car was as described and as I'd expected. The paintwork could do with some correction as it's clearly been machine washed many times in it's life. The underneath has some surface crust so will be having that seen to and future proofed imminently. Other than that a missing centre cap and some rather naff number plates (rear is 3d and both have 'MX5 Special Edition' on as well as Mazda logos) were the only stand out items that needed doing.
The trader was a nice old boy who's been trading since the 70's and had over 500 positive feedback on Autotrader. Amusingly, he'd forgotten to MOT the car to give it the 12 months as advertised (I think he'd been enjoying the Christmas break a little too much from what I gathered), so it'll be going to my local independent this week and he'll pick up the tab and will rectify any issues that might arise.
Plans at the moment are limited to tidying it up paintwork and possible wheel refurb. A must is full preventative rust treatments and deal with any rot that might be hidden away (it's an MX5 and it's left the dealership, there's always rust).
Anyway, enough waffle and here's some pics from the advert.[url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/eacrhLwL[/url]I have an mx5 and I haven’t put a thread up since I have been doing it over on mx5OC. £4k for a mk3.5 is a good deal so I would assume it has 100k miles on it?
Speaking of rust treatment I’m currently about to let someone fully strip my under carriage for a full refurb.
We are talking engine out, subframes off. Back to bare metal.
Speaking of rust treatment I’m currently about to let someone fully strip my under carriage for a full refurb.
We are talking engine out, subframes off. Back to bare metal.
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