You’d Have To Be Crazy To Buy A Lifted Miata With 11 Friends But I Did It Anyway. Here’s How It’s Going

As a compromised, aggregate person, I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest at posting updates on my personal vehicles here. I’ve found the coolant leak on my BMW, I’ve already been tentatively shopping around for a new daily, and well, the Porsche’s been damn near faultless, so there’s little to write about here. However, a little bit like Dave Grohl, I have another confession to make. Folks, I have a car that I’ve been keeping a secret, and it’s magnificent. Well, sort of I. Anyway, y’all like weird Miata builds?

Flashback to Spring, I was doing car things with friends, when we were offered a 1999 Mazda MX-5 Miata. The seller was asking $3,000 Canadian, it was blacked-out but in a slightly derpy way, like a goofy little tadpole, and came with a hardtop, but that’s not the best part — it was lifted on hilariously oversized all-terrain tires.

Now, would any single one of us pay $3,000 for it? Maybe one or two, but otherwise, maybe not. However, we all realized we’d each pay a few hundred bucks to own this thing. Somehow, this still sounded like a good idea in the morning, so a deal was struck. A deal that eventually gathered so much momentum, we ended up ultimately splitting a lifted Miata 12 (!) ways. A low-stakes experiment in low-forethought activity.

Days later, a small handful of us rolled up to where the bedliner-sprayed, lifted MX-5 lived, and discovered a few great things and a few not-so-great things. On the minus side, the fabric roof was a biohazard, the driver’s seat squab had worn in lopsided, the radio didn’t work, and the bull bar was a collision waiting to happen. However, did the car start? Absolutely. Did it run like a top? You bet. Did the brakes work? Well, you see…

Yes, part of the reason this NB MX-5 Miata was such a steal was because it was an outdoor car, and in a climate like Toronto, that just spells bad news, particularly to pre-2010s Japanese cars. Sure, this Miata may have received new sills and some inner wheel arch patching, but one of the brake lines, well, broke. Specifically, it rotted away to pieces, pissed out all the available fluid, and while it ran just fine and dandy, it didn’t exactly stop well. So, what do you do when you’re driving a car with no brakes out of a garage that exits on a downwards slope? Have three or four people at the bottom of the dip to, um, catch the Miata. I still have no idea how this actually worked without anyone getting horribly maimed.

Anyway, after towing it back to our secret HQ, we made a plan — flare some ni-copp brake lines — the same sort of stuff Volvo uses — to fix the brake fluid leak, re-clearance the fenders gingerly with a sledgehammer, remove the hazardously attached bull bar, and yoink out the moldy soft top. A few weeks later, we were in business, having the absolute time of our lives for about $350 Canadian each. That’s about $257.37 USD per person. Score!

Now, the thing about a lifted Mazda MX-5 Miata is that it’s inherently interesting, but not in an extravagant way, more in a commitment to the bit way. It’s provocative, it gets the people going. As a result, you tend to get asked variations of the same four questions at red lights and gas stations:

1. What’s this car supposed to be?
2. What does it drive like?
3. Does it rub?
4. Why?

The answers to those four questions go as follows:

1. Stupid.
2. Surprisingly, it drives like a Miata.
3. Like a virgin with a bottle of Jergens.
4. Because funny.

Look, aside from the comical and far too large 29-inch all-terrain tires, the Paco Motorsports strut mount relocation lift kit, a set of eBay adjustable rear upper control arms, and depowered steering, this is an NB MX-5 Miata with a genuine 59,000 miles on the clock. The roughest 59,000 miles imaginable, but still. As a result, the 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine is still a peach all the way to 7,000 rpm, the shifter is still divine, body motions are surprisingly well controlled for something with so much ground clearance, but the ride isn’t that harsh. Sure, the aged all-terrains seem to combine the squirm of bias plies with the firm-ish impact response of radials, but it’s kind of entertaining having limits this low. The open differential does need to be fixed at some point though, because that just ain’t flying this winter.

However, the modifications the previous owner of the Miata did to make it unique have the side effect of completely city-proofing it. Worried about door dings? Anyone who dings you will be scraping their paint against bedliner, so they lose. Worried about potholes, speed bumps, raised manhole covers, and torn-up construction zones? Not anymore, you’re not. Worried about getting your soft top slashed? Hardtop or no top, no false sense of security here. In a place where it’s a bit shit to own a sports car, like Toronto, it’s genius.

As for splitting it 12 ways, that’s also worked out. Everyone’s got something out of it, almost everyone’s actually worked on it, and the Miata hasn’t just been sitting around unused, but rather, racking up real miles. It’s been to at least one prestigious show, been locally Facebook famous, gone places, met people, had dogs in it, and has just generally been a trooper. It’s even got us out of jams, like one friend having both of his cars out of commission, and the city temporarily revoking my driveway access.

Splitting maintenance is no hardship because it’s genuinely so cheap, and although whoever wants it has to go get it rather than have it delivered, it should always come with a full tank of gas. So far, so good on that front. Even on the event anyone wants out, they contractually have to be cashed out, so some safeguards are in place. Tickets, damage, and impoundment are the responsibility of whoever was driving, and so far, that hasn’t been much of a problem either. Sure, insurance took some sorting, but once that was done? Bombs away.

So, if you find a cataclysmically dumb car on Marketplace or Craigslist or elsewhere that you and your buddies all want, why not split it if it’s low-stakes enough? Think of the benefits — lower maintenance costs, fewer HOA complaints, plausible deniability, shared knowledge. I don’t recommend it for most people, but with the right group of people, it could work. In any case, lifted sports cars rule, sometimes bad decisions work out okay, and despite accusations of David going Hollywood, Autopian authors will still continue to buy questionable shitboxes forever.

(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)

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