The MX-5 Miata of the Month from

August 2007

Mia and Peter Esders

pe@lawoverseas.com

Congratulations to Mia on being selected as the August MX-5 of the Month!

Hi my name is Mia and has been ever since my owners bought me over 9 years ago. I am a UK registered MX-5, but as my cousins are called Miatas in the USA I was immediately named in their honour. In fact my previous owners even put Miata kick plates on me which are still there. Little did I know that many years later a film would come out with a car just like me in it!

I am an early Classic Red 1.6 in pretty much original condition (with the exception of a few modifications such as a bigger exhaust to help me breath – after all one of owners is mildly asthmatic as well!). When I was purchased by my present owners I had 45,000 miles on the clock. Since then I have covered over 110,000 more miles – each one of them (with the exception of the odd traffic jam) has been huge fun. I am still in good condition even if I say so myself, although I do get regular maintenance from one of my owners who is always “fettling” to make sure that I am in peak condition.

I am the first sports car that my owners have ever had and they have always wanted one – especially in red. I am so glad that they chose me because they really look after me and have told me that they will never get rid of me. I have however been joined by a Honda Civic as she has more seats than I have, but I know that they don’t care about her as much as they do me (although don’t tell her I told you this).

I used to be used as an every day car driving to work and back but since my owners now both commute to work in London on the train I only get used at the weekends now – although at the weekends I certainly get looked after with regular washes and get driven properly. I am well known for always being clean, but I am not a garage queen – I get used regularly and hard, which is the way that it should be.

I am taken on holiday every year to go to watch the Le Mans 24 Hour race (a race in which Mazda is still the only Japanese manufacturer to win) in France. Le Mans is great fun – the journey down there is part of the fun as there is always convoys of exotic cars flying around. In fact, the journey down there is probably as fun as the actual event. It starts when you get closer to the ferry and start to see all the other cars going to the same place. When we get off the other side it is then a great drive down to the circuit and everybody is really friendly and waves at each other as we go along.

When we go down to Le Mans I always catch up with a few friends that I see there every year, including my owner’s business partner’s Teal (which is a replica of a Type 35 Bugatti). There is always a bunch of us who meet up down there. Some of us only see each other once a year at the event! We have had some great drives through the countryside of France together and even I get some of the attention in France as not many of my cousins live there.

I also regularly get taken other places on holiday. I am based in the UK and am a member of the MX-5 Owners Club – which is a great Club to be a member of. In fact both of my owners have been on the Committee of the Club at one point or another. With the Club I have visited many parts of the country and even been abroad. We went to Germany a few years ago and was allowed to play on a test track – which was huge fun. I even learnt how to do 360º turns in the wet and then carry on driving like they do in the movies and visited the headquarters of Mazda over there.

This year for the Owners Club Spring Rally I thought I would do something different so I decided to dress up as one of my heros – Lightning McQueen from the Cars film. I still can’t believe that they had another Miata in the film with the same name as me! I have never done anything like this before and it was really fun – I even had people taking pictures of me on the motorway (I think you call them freeways over there on the other side of the pond) and putting their thumbs up in approval! I think I will keep my disguise on for another month and do the annual trip to Le Mans and then go back to normal. My owner helped me out by making me a mask (a sun screen with eyes on it) and painting up a spare grill that he had. He even painted up my spare set of wheels so that I really looked the part.

Here I am by a river on one of the scenic drives that we did at the Spring Rally. That day we did 200 miles just for run – all on fantastic roads with loads of corners (which after all is what I was born for) and over the weekend we did about 800 miles. Sometimes we were on our own and sometimes we were in a convoy of about 20 other MX-5s – which was great fun, particularly driving through the country villages where they had never seen anything like this.

After the Rally on the trip home I made a detour to go and visit my owners nephew. I had secretly arranged with his parents to go and pick him up at school dressed up as McQueen. All the kids were so excited to see Lightning McQueen that the teachers brought them out class by class to come out and have a look at me. The nephews were very excited – and that was before they realised that it was me and that they would be getting rides in me later on! It was really nice to make all the kids smile and even some of the teachers were taking pictures on their mobile phones to show their friends.

One of my owners has been a fan of Miata.net ever since I became his. He has never posted anything on the forums (he doesn’t like to because he doesn’t know how different my American cousins are), but has found the information on there invaluable over the years for me and logs on nearly every day. In fact, he sometimes thinks that he actually knows some of the people on there - even they don't know him. Many of the tips have been used to keep me going over the years and we would like to thank everybody on Miata.net on his behalf for their input over the years. He may even start to post on the forum….

Mia

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