MX-5 Questions. Any advice?
Discussion
'Er indoors wants an MX-5, (dont take the pi55, I have a TVR!).
I've just been to see an importer, and compared to some of the other stuff I have seen both at Mazda main dealers and private sellers, I was very impressed.
The cars are purchased second hand in Japan and exported to the UK where they are re-registered and go through all the legal stuff like SVA checks.
The cars are the Eunos Roadster variation.
We have around £6,000 to £7,000 to spend and I would like to hear from MX-5 owners what their opinion is.
Faults I am aware of are:-
1) Rear subframes prone to rust.
2) Cam cover gaskets can leak.
3) Brake master cylinders leak.
Anything else?
We have seen one car in particular for £6,500 which is very clean and has 50,000 miles on the clock, but as I have said it is a Eunos Roadster and not MX-5 Mazda badged. Is there anything I should be aware of i.e. parts interchangeability?
Thanks for any help,
Jas.
I've just been to see an importer, and compared to some of the other stuff I have seen both at Mazda main dealers and private sellers, I was very impressed.
The cars are purchased second hand in Japan and exported to the UK where they are re-registered and go through all the legal stuff like SVA checks.
The cars are the Eunos Roadster variation.
We have around £6,000 to £7,000 to spend and I would like to hear from MX-5 owners what their opinion is.
Faults I am aware of are:-
1) Rear subframes prone to rust.
2) Cam cover gaskets can leak.
3) Brake master cylinders leak.
Anything else?
We have seen one car in particular for £6,500 which is very clean and has 50,000 miles on the clock, but as I have said it is a Eunos Roadster and not MX-5 Mazda badged. Is there anything I should be aware of i.e. parts interchangeability?
Thanks for any help,
Jas.
Jas,
My mum has in imported K plate with all the goodies. She loves it to bits. Has just bought the smaller headlights and the K&N induction kit which really inproves the breathing.
My mate has had one for 3.5years now and has had nothing go wrong in particular. Both of these are every day drivers, Eunos Roadsters.
I have driven his on a couple of occasions and found it great fun. My mates is the 1800 16v jobby and is pretty quick, not TVR quick but entertaining.
There is tonnes of info available on the net aswell. My mums a member of the Club so if you want any info on cars advertised there then let me know. Their mag is as good as Sprint.
Parts are easily available.
Cheers
Mark
My mum has in imported K plate with all the goodies. She loves it to bits. Has just bought the smaller headlights and the K&N induction kit which really inproves the breathing.
My mate has had one for 3.5years now and has had nothing go wrong in particular. Both of these are every day drivers, Eunos Roadsters.
I have driven his on a couple of occasions and found it great fun. My mates is the 1800 16v jobby and is pretty quick, not TVR quick but entertaining.
There is tonnes of info available on the net aswell. My mums a member of the Club so if you want any info on cars advertised there then let me know. Their mag is as good as Sprint.
Parts are easily available.
Cheers
Mark
quote:
I have some experience, 50k Miles? Japan is KM. so the speedo is not correct. The insurance is more expensive, the panels are thiner, etc etc. I bought a UK car, it didnt have A/C, PAS, Leather but i sold it quite easily a year later!
The car we are looking at has 81,000 KM which equates to 50,000 Miles. It does have A/C, cloth interior but I don't know about PAS.
There is a breather mod on the induction system, which includes a K&N type filter and a nice 4 branch exhaust manifold.
I have been told to stay away from importers as they are in it for the money.
What do you guys think?
Jas.
These cars are so affordable now and there are loads on the market.
What about the service history with this imported one? I have heard they rarely 'ship' with the paperwork ...
Unless there's a good saving moneywise I'd stick with buying a home-grown car (there are excellent ones out there, you've just got to search around, but for some, that's the enjoyable bit!)
Mike
What about the service history with this imported one? I have heard they rarely 'ship' with the paperwork ...
Unless there's a good saving moneywise I'd stick with buying a home-grown car (there are excellent ones out there, you've just got to search around, but for some, that's the enjoyable bit!)
Mike
quote:
I have been told to stay away from importers as they are in it for the money.
We had a car imported from a guy in the New Forest, he was very honest, replaced tyres without quibble, changed the car to UK spec (and told us how some importes con you) and basically we got a faultless, rustless car with lots of extras that you don't get here, which was cheaper than the UK car.. Mail me if you want his name/no.
Jas, me and the missus have had 2 - both a MK1 and a MK2.
Excellent cars, very little to go wrong.
The problems you mention are quite well known, but you omit a major problem - early cars (1990-91) had a lightweight crank that was prone to early wear. Cure is either a new block, or a fix with strong adhesive (true!!).
The Owners Club is a good source of information - check out www.mx5oc.co.uk, and also an archive of the MX-5 mailing list - don't have the URL but it should be linked from the OC Website.
UK dealers are a bit anti imports, but this is slowly changing as they watch hoardes of owners seek specialists for servicing etc. If you go in for parts they might give you a load of cobblers about part differences. There's a few minor different parts (the windshield is slightly thinner on an import, but with a new rubber a UK spec screen may be used)
The main difference between buying a Jap import and a UK spec car is that the Jap sourced cars are higher specced - typically you'll always get leccy windows, mirrors, air con and so on. If you want (why ?) an auto version it will have to be an import - it wasn't available on UK cars until the latest facelift (2001 onwards)
They wear miles well as long as they're well looked after - I have friends who have cars well over 100K on the clock.
If you need any further info, please mail me off list - happy to help.
>> Edited by GregE240 on Tuesday 7th May 08:20
Excellent cars, very little to go wrong.
The problems you mention are quite well known, but you omit a major problem - early cars (1990-91) had a lightweight crank that was prone to early wear. Cure is either a new block, or a fix with strong adhesive (true!!).
The Owners Club is a good source of information - check out www.mx5oc.co.uk, and also an archive of the MX-5 mailing list - don't have the URL but it should be linked from the OC Website.
UK dealers are a bit anti imports, but this is slowly changing as they watch hoardes of owners seek specialists for servicing etc. If you go in for parts they might give you a load of cobblers about part differences. There's a few minor different parts (the windshield is slightly thinner on an import, but with a new rubber a UK spec screen may be used)
The main difference between buying a Jap import and a UK spec car is that the Jap sourced cars are higher specced - typically you'll always get leccy windows, mirrors, air con and so on. If you want (why ?) an auto version it will have to be an import - it wasn't available on UK cars until the latest facelift (2001 onwards)
They wear miles well as long as they're well looked after - I have friends who have cars well over 100K on the clock.
If you need any further info, please mail me off list - happy to help.
>> Edited by GregE240 on Tuesday 7th May 08:20
Just one info with Jap 2nd hand imports. New Zealands government took Japan to court as they were receiving thousands!!!! of cars with their clocks turned back! (NB NZ-dealers won and got a lot of compensation!) I don't know whether this is the case in GB but I'd certainly be aware of this problem.
Hope you get a good 'un...........
Hope you get a good 'un...........
Similar to JMGS4's warning above, we get a lot of Japanese grey imports in Australia and I've heard that a good percentage of them have been in serious accidents - the car is badly damaged and is repaired, but then the car is marked somehow (on the registration perhaps) that it's had significant damage. It means they become difficult to sell in Japan, but the same restriction doesn't apply if the car is shipped overseas. So dealers buy them up cheap and send them overseas where the history of the car is difficult to trace.
A friend at work bought a GTR R34 from an importer and had no problems with it at all, until he wanted to sell it - took him 18 months. He paid $70K-ish and had it for less than 2 years, and he was only asking circa $55K. he got it, but like I said it wasn't exactly a quick sale.
A friend at work bought a GTR R34 from an importer and had no problems with it at all, until he wanted to sell it - took him 18 months. He paid $70K-ish and had it for less than 2 years, and he was only asking circa $55K. he got it, but like I said it wasn't exactly a quick sale.
Like with anything, there's good importers and bad importers ....
A good importer will convert the speedo to MPH (including new face) AFTER the sale (i.e. you see the original, unmessed with KM speedo before you buy the car), underseal and totally prep the car for UK spec, give a warrenty, SVA it and all the rest. You will probably end up paying a touch more for this than from a bargain basement importer, but it's worth it (IMO)
Also, a good importer will have their own buyers over in japan, so they can vet the cars before they are purchased and come across, which reduces the chances of getting written off cars etc ... that does happen, but pretty rarely (at the moment).
Otherwise, pretty much everything said above is true. The body panels aren't thinner, though the rear number plate panel has a slightly different imprint for the number plate (no biggie). Check out the insurance first, some can be a bit funny about imports.
The Japanese spec Eunos is a very very similar to the UK spec MX5 .... some cars are quite different, different trim, wheels, etc etc, but the MX5 is pretty close, which is good if you break something. Try and stay away from cars with too many aftermarket bits and bobs, especially wheels .... the Japanese like to customise their cars, but if you break (say) an aftermarket wheel then you can bet that you wont be able to get a replacement if it came from some Japanese equivalent to Halfords
"I have been told to stay away from importers as they are in it for the money. " ...... and UK dealers are in it for love and kisses ?
Re service history, again a good dealer will ship and give you the service history .... the only problem is, I've seen one of these, and unless you're good at Japanese you can't make head nor tail of them !! You could get it translated though, if you were really bothered about it. Remember that Jap cars generally have done pretty low mileage, and will usually be 3, 6 or 9 years old (as they have a punitive 3 year equivalent to the MOT which costs big money to go through)
Re rust and underseal, remember that the majority of Jap cars are exported from Japan with no underseal from the factory, it's usually the dealer or UK branch of (in this case) Mazda who apply the underseal in the destination country, so there's no guarantee of quality on underseal on a UK car either .... you ought to see the underneith of my old (R reg) UK spec, UK dealer bought Nissan 200SX, the amount of places they'd missed was shocking !
But, like buying any car, just watch your back, shop round, go look at a few different importers and cars. Get it AA checked (or similar) if you're not sure.
BTW my wife works for an Japanese importers, so I claim insider knowledge
A good importer will convert the speedo to MPH (including new face) AFTER the sale (i.e. you see the original, unmessed with KM speedo before you buy the car), underseal and totally prep the car for UK spec, give a warrenty, SVA it and all the rest. You will probably end up paying a touch more for this than from a bargain basement importer, but it's worth it (IMO)
Also, a good importer will have their own buyers over in japan, so they can vet the cars before they are purchased and come across, which reduces the chances of getting written off cars etc ... that does happen, but pretty rarely (at the moment).
Otherwise, pretty much everything said above is true. The body panels aren't thinner, though the rear number plate panel has a slightly different imprint for the number plate (no biggie). Check out the insurance first, some can be a bit funny about imports.
The Japanese spec Eunos is a very very similar to the UK spec MX5 .... some cars are quite different, different trim, wheels, etc etc, but the MX5 is pretty close, which is good if you break something. Try and stay away from cars with too many aftermarket bits and bobs, especially wheels .... the Japanese like to customise their cars, but if you break (say) an aftermarket wheel then you can bet that you wont be able to get a replacement if it came from some Japanese equivalent to Halfords
"I have been told to stay away from importers as they are in it for the money. " ...... and UK dealers are in it for love and kisses ?
Re service history, again a good dealer will ship and give you the service history .... the only problem is, I've seen one of these, and unless you're good at Japanese you can't make head nor tail of them !! You could get it translated though, if you were really bothered about it. Remember that Jap cars generally have done pretty low mileage, and will usually be 3, 6 or 9 years old (as they have a punitive 3 year equivalent to the MOT which costs big money to go through)
Re rust and underseal, remember that the majority of Jap cars are exported from Japan with no underseal from the factory, it's usually the dealer or UK branch of (in this case) Mazda who apply the underseal in the destination country, so there's no guarantee of quality on underseal on a UK car either .... you ought to see the underneith of my old (R reg) UK spec, UK dealer bought Nissan 200SX, the amount of places they'd missed was shocking !
But, like buying any car, just watch your back, shop round, go look at a few different importers and cars. Get it AA checked (or similar) if you're not sure.
BTW my wife works for an Japanese importers, so I claim insider knowledge
GregE240 - oh, by the way, the "thinner windscreen" thing is a falacy encouraged by the UK dealers. ALL the glass on the cars are checked for the appropriate euro safety marks at SVA. Thinner glass would fail SVA. Unless the car is over 10 years old, of course, in which case it doesn't need to be SVA'd (personally, wouldn't buy an import that old that's just been imported for that reason)
Put simply, any car that's been SVA'd means the car is to UK spec. That means no dodgy panels, or thin windscreens or low spec tyres. And there is NO way of faking an SVA (unlike an MOT !) as they're all done by government representatives. At my wife's place they actually have approval to SVA on site (they are one of the biggest importers, so it's cost effective to do this), but they have to pay the government to have a government employee on site, who does the tests. Theyre pretty strict
Put simply, any car that's been SVA'd means the car is to UK spec. That means no dodgy panels, or thin windscreens or low spec tyres. And there is NO way of faking an SVA (unlike an MOT !) as they're all done by government representatives. At my wife's place they actually have approval to SVA on site (they are one of the biggest importers, so it's cost effective to do this), but they have to pay the government to have a government employee on site, who does the tests. Theyre pretty strict
Thanks for all of the help and advice everyone!
We finally bought a 1994 Eunos Roadster 1.8 with 40K miles, CD player, air con, e/w, e/m, PAS, etc...
The car was imported last year by a friend of the couple who we bought it from, and now they are expecting their first child they needed something more practical.
The car is very clean, (not even one stonechip!) and underneath is as clean as on top! I went over the whole car looking for the 'catch' but there was nothing wrong!
Insurance for the Eunos is the same as the Mazda through my wifes' broker so no problems there either!
The wife is going around wearing the same silly grin I had when I bought the Tiv! (she looks like she got a coathanger stuck in her mouth).
Jas.
We finally bought a 1994 Eunos Roadster 1.8 with 40K miles, CD player, air con, e/w, e/m, PAS, etc...
The car was imported last year by a friend of the couple who we bought it from, and now they are expecting their first child they needed something more practical.
The car is very clean, (not even one stonechip!) and underneath is as clean as on top! I went over the whole car looking for the 'catch' but there was nothing wrong!
Insurance for the Eunos is the same as the Mazda through my wifes' broker so no problems there either!
The wife is going around wearing the same silly grin I had when I bought the Tiv! (she looks like she got a coathanger stuck in her mouth).
Jas.
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