MX-5 Owners Club replace Danny's threadbare Mazda lid
Kettle on... time for some tall tales from the PC workshnp —
My silver MX-5 NB is a scruffy pup, but I like it like that. Found under a tarpaulin on a driveway six years ago and bought for just £250 it’s delivered fun, with interest on every occasion. Reviving it was a joy. It’s well made, with intuitive access to Mazda’s excellent engineering all round, plus there’s plenty of advice and support out there. Getting it back on the road was part of the fun.
With the mechanical parts and bodywork done it has served myself and my wife well for over 15,000 miles. The smiles per mile factor with any MX-5 come as standard, it’s all about the drive, almost. After a trip to France recently, and a fireside chat with MX-5 Owner’s Club chieftain, Iain Flemming, I took a long look at the care-worn roadster and decided a spruce-up was in order. It is the 25th anniversary of the second generation of the world’s favourite sports car after all.
For this task I enlisted the best of the best, the club themselves – no one knows more about what’s on offer and how to apply it. First on the to do list was the hood. I was pretty certain the shredded covering was the factory original. Any speed above thirty miles per hour rendered non-shouty conversation impossible, and in wet weather… damp shoulder becomes a thing. It also looked like someone had attacked it with a carving knife and then covered up the evidence with gaffer tape, making other road users wince at the question, ‘what did they do to deserve that?’
A new canvas hood was ordered from Andy Pearson at MX5parts. A new line, these hoods are gaining a growing reputation for being rather excellent and not that expensive. Well-made aftermarket kit is all part of the MX5 experience. Then I buddied up with club members from specialist MX-5 restorer, Chris Loader and Garath Smith, who also have a YouTube channel called Lights Up Lights Down. They agreed to fit it at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration show and film the process for their channel while I tried to revive th
