Track-Day Mobility Pod: Revisiting the ND1 Miata
If you haven’t driven an ND Miata before and are wondering if you should get one, this isn’t the article for you…
Oh hey, I haven’t lost you yet? Fantastic!
For the driving enthusiasts out there, the Miata is always a car that has been undeniably great. This is now the 3rd time I’ve spent a continuous amount of time driving my good friend’s ND1 “Streetable Track Toy”, and within 24 hours I’m already on Autotempest trying to sort out which one is right for me. With the cars we’ve driven recently for an upcoming project (all of which are great naturally aspirated cars), I never feel quite the same as I do getting out of my friend Sasha’s car. Allow me to roll the clock back and explain.
The year of 2021 is the one that I like to refer to as “The One Where I drove Other People’s Cars.” It started with this ND Miata, and included daily driving a Lotus Elise, an E90 M3 sedan with a stick, and also a brand new C8-generation RS6 Avant. It was a good summer to be Gavin, and after driving those other cars mentioned, the ND Miata was still one that stuck out to me. I really loved the experience of driving it to work in the morning with a coffee, then taking it up a canyon road after work for some well-deserved Throttle Therapy.
Most car reviews include some essential boiler-plate items such as engine power output, and how it’s “mated” to the transmission and putting the power down to the drive wheels. Well, the ND Miata has been out for a decade, so if you already don’t know the specs, there are other resources to help you there. All you really need to know about the driveline is that the 2.0 liter engine making 155hp is sufficient for getting around, and having a little bit of fun while doing so.
Take a 2300lb car, add wider and much stickier tires, a well tuned suspension, and a cheeky little cat-back exhaust, and the math of that adds up to be a pretty good time. It absolutely can be. In daily driving situations, the clutch, shifter, and even the track brake pads were all flawless in gridlocked 9:00 am traffic. From a stop, the throttle is eager to rev up, and even more so to rev down coming to a stop.
Over the past 4 years, the population of Salt Lake City, and other areas have seen an increase. An increase to the tune of 46,000 people. In an urban area of a population of over a million people, that may not seem that large. But ask anyone that lives here, and they will tell you otherwise. Walking into this experience, I was really hoping to have a personal mobility pod in which I could rip through gears, while not being completely anti-social on the daily commute to-and-from work. That was not the case. So, let’s revisit a question (only asked by myself) from 2021, but with a twist… What’s it like to daily drive a track-ready ND Miata, in 2025 traffic?
This ND1 Miata is equipped with an aftermarket tune that gives a little more power over the factory 155 horsepower at the tire, and enables an automatic throttle-blipping when slowing down above 3,000 rpm. Is something like this in a car built to be driven really necessary? Coming from someone who loves to continuously hone their driving craft, but also who enjoys using rev-matching technology in other cars, absolutely not.
With the near perfect spacing of the pedals, I don’t see a legitimate and practical use here. The only times when I feel like auto-blipping is useful, is when the engine is under 3,000 rpm and coming to a stop, and I want to downshift. Funny enough, under that threshold is also when the throttle pedal picks and chooses when it wants to respond.
Sometimes, it’s great. Other times, it completely ignores the request for revs and does nothing. I know I’m not taking crazy pills here because I have felt the side of my foot move and modulate the throttle pedal, and nothing happened. Is it the aftermarket tune? Is it related to the throttle pedal tuning from Mazda? It’s hard to say because it only happens sometimes, and isn’t consistent in how or why it happens. It became more and more obvious towards the end of my time with the car that this feature applies more for track-duty, making sure you nail that downshift flying into a corner, than it does pulling into a grocery store parking lot.
The other hold-back from me wanting to steal this car and drive off into the sunset is the ride quality, but it’s not what you think. Yes, the owner uses this car to compete in TT racing on track, but the issue doesn’t come to only suspension. It’s the tires.
Tires on this car come in the form of 225/50 R16 Hankook Ecsta V730s. Back in 2021 when I drove the car before, it was on Firestone Firehawk Indy 500s. Those were supple and absorbed plenty of bumps and cracks in the road just fine. While on my own car I’ve gradually increased the class of tires over the years, and in this application, I finally found something that would be absolutely too much tire for a street car to have any kind of fun. The stiffness wasn’t back breaking, but in the first 24 hours with the car, my ass left the seat approximately 5 times, to which I finally pulled over to adjust the coilover suspension to match the spring rate of the tire more appropriately. 4 clicks to the right, and the setup felt more natural and congruent. This experience came somewhat revelatory, due to only hearing about tires playing a role in a car’s suspension Learning and feeling this on the fly was an eye-opening experience. I’ve felt bigger wheels play a role with cars riding rough, but never stiff sidewalls.
There were a few moments of pure joy without worry of congested roads and other drivers staring at their phones. Those moments were a breath of fresh air and a momentary sigh of relief to enjoy such a well tuned machine paired with perfect roads for the occasion.
Now that the car is back home, and I’m writing this article at 12:42 am, I do miss the car. I won’t sell my Fiesta ST to get into an ND Miata, so that means I need a place to store one. Maybe it’ll happen one day, but until then I’ll just swap for a week with Sasha and we can nerd out over driving dynamics and everything else we love about our cars.
