This is what makes the Miata perfect

Spirituality can mean many things. It can be theology – your gods, your gods, the divine – or it can be the philosophy, the approach to life – the Tao, balance, peace. It can even be anything you make spiritual, simple movement, critical thinking, or the smell of burning wood on a winter night.

Spirituality is the reverence and access to something beyond oneself. A state of flow, if you will.

It would be pretentious for me to say that a good sports car achieves all of these things. It might be incendiary to say that only a sports car does that now It’s a Mazda Miata. It’s Tao in the car. It is balance and beauty, restraint and movement, man and machine.

I learned this in-depth, when I had the opportunity to drive an ND3 Miata 1,300 miles along the California spine, from Los Angeles to Monterey and back. There, I also learned the redemptive power of good leadership.

The Miata is endlessly fascinating because it’s not designed for anyone in particular. A core group of geeks within the small Hiroshima-based automaker is building them into a very specific niche, one that’s not beholden to broader enthusiast opinions.

Miyata is a tastemaker, not a follower.

It all started nearly 30 years ago in California. The highlights are well known: Mazda wanted to build a roadster modeled on the British roadsters of old. In an internal design competition, the Japanese team proposed the front-wheel drive idea, while the California team proposed the rear-wheel drive design that became the innovative lightweight NA Miata. With a design team led by the recently departed Tom Matano, the P729 project was lovingly developed (along with the FD generation RX-7) on the back roads of California.

Although Narcotics Anonymous was certainly a global effort, the imagination that drove the project was that of California. The goal was to create a sports car that could be fun at all speeds and comfortable for long distance cruising on back roads, offering a haven for anyone who drove it. As Nobuhiro Yamamoto, ND MX-5 (and FC and FD RX-7) program manager, said, “The RX-7 is a pure sports car…but the MX-5 is fun to drive. You make you smile.”

But the Miata has always been more than the sum of its parts. He had reached for something higher, something kinetic and ancient. Through four generations of Miata, this “something” has been explored, but never refined as much as it is now. ND3 Miata is the Final Miata. And California as well the The ultimate Miata environment.

Monterey is the heart of California’s Central Coast. Once the capital of Spanish-ruled California in 1777, it is now some of the most valuable real estate on the planet.

Most people know Monterey thanks to Monterey Bay, its aquarium, and the nearby town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Even with the rich splendor of California’s coast, Monterey is exceptionally beautiful. Car lovers will know it as the heart of Monterey Car Week, where the Peninsula and Carmel are packed with cars.

Downtown Monterey in “Oh my God, did the cars hit me?” The Sunday after this year’s Car Week was the starting point for the 400-mile journey home. I plotted a route that avoided most highways, but I didn’t take the Pacific Coast Highway. Avoiding PCH was valid for two reasons: the road is not open all the way, and PCH is not a good road to drive. It’s scenic, sure, but the little-known roads that lie between Interstate 5 and Route 101 are where the real gems are.

From Monterey, Miyata and I drove through Carmel Valley to the first stop: the Carmel Valley Trail. It extends 45 miles southeast of Carmel-By-The-Sea with a strip of fallen asphalt. It’s a quintessential Central California road – narrow, painfully twisty and bumpy. It couldn’t be more perfect for a Miata.

Of all the accusations leveled against the ND MX-5, being too cheesy and ridiculous is the biggest. In previous iterations, this was true. But updates to the steering and differential-locking characteristics transformed the Miata from a somewhat unpredictable whim into an absolutely gorgeous, incredibly precise waterbed.

Over hills, camber changes and ruts, composure was never in doubt. Suspension control was precise and consistent, but never disturbed the Miata’s overall motion. Mid-corner bumps will have little effect on turn-in, and the steering conveys detail and load changes quite clearly. On low-grip Bridgestone tires, the Miata danced and moved, making the 40-mph backroad a playground for chassis dynamics.

OoopsJust a little more brake pressure and the Miata will back its tail into the turn. Equally, a bit of enthusiastic throttle combined with some steering input provoked baby slides. However the Wadi Jar was wide and nice, making it easy to choose what you wanted. A 45-mile stretch of bumpy, off-beat backroads became as approachable and approachable as a Miata. Slowly, surely, the meditation began. And just when the euphoria broke out, I saw the amazing views that the heart of California had to offer.

A walk along the Carmel Valley via the Arroyo Seco River brought me into the wider, densely cultivated Salinas Valley. From there, I avoided Route 101 as much as I could, instead driving along two-lane farm roads just outside of Greenfield. But soon the party was over, and my back-road trip turned into a highway until I met the coast again.

However, Route 101 is an alternative corridor to cross the state. For those who don’t know, Interstate 5 is the main artery connecting Southern and Northern California, running through the San Joaquin Valley. To the west, the 101 winds along the coast and smaller valleys, following a much more natural highway than the 5. Finally, Route 1, known as PCH, passes the coast. The numbers 1 and 101 are often simultaneous but often follow different paths.

Route 101 predates the interstate system, but is an example of a highway in the 1920s. It’s in the same vein as the Arroyo Seco Parkway in Long Angeles as an early forerunner of super-efficient and very expensive highways, but was ultimately limited by the tools of the time. However, it is a gentle highway that winds and weaves, leaving little room for boredom as it approaches the coast.

The only windswept valley 101 slowly became greener, and once I reached the inland city of San Luis Obispo, I knew the coast wasn’t far away. Then, about 156 miles south of Monterey, the Pacific Ocean revealed itself again.

By now, the drive was melting. I stopped in the town of Pismo Beach, famous for its drive-access sand dunes and known as the “Clam Capital of the World,” ate a very agreeable cheeseburger and stared at the beach for a while, keeping in mind ND3.

I’ve written about the car and driven it almost ad nauseam. I’ve extolled the virtues of other similar sports cars for many years, such as the exceptional second-generation Subaru BRZ or the superior Honda S2000. In fact, I bought the S2000 to replace my BRZ because I wanted to have the purest sports experience possible. However, the ND3 got me thinking that I might be wrong about it.

My thoughts continued as I headed east from Pismo Beach, the final leg of my journey. State Route 166, known as the Koyama Expressway, passes through the Koyama Valley and leads to the city of Koyama. Finally, in the late afternoon, I could drop the summit and get lost in the romance of it all—the falling sun, the ND, and the limitless sky.

The combination of qualities is just right. The Miata is lightweight and has double wishbones throughout, making it ideal for sporting purposes. It also rides very well and benefits from its smoothness, providing a more engaging and transparent driving experience. It’s also quiet enough to live with every day, tiring enough to be memorable, but livable enough that I don’t dread driving it. With the top down, it’s windy, but not exhaustingly so.

The ND engine is lively, smooth, and rejuvenating, while the transmission is a poetry that a generation of car enthusiasts has judged over every other manual transmission. The ND3’s new steering rack is good from Porsche – it’s intuitive, with a clearly defined effort curve and real feedback.

After that, it looks new, modern and young, even though the ND is almost a decade old. There’s craftsmanship and sophistication to its design, and it feels more than its price or parts. I like Mazda’s resistance to screens, leaving the huge analog tachometer dead center of the gauge cluster.

A Miata captures a moment in time and constantly replays that memory for its driver. The totality of emotion created this. Humans who are hurt by the emotion of a product rather than the numbers it delivers. That’s what makes the MX-5 exceptional. He couldn’t be bothered about being the fastest and most technologically advanced.

It’s incredible that, in 2025, the ND Miata exists at all. Not just in the regulatory sense – emissions, accident safety, consumer demands – but in the philosophical sense. We are firmly in a post-cultural world. Originality and original thought are hard to come by. Many of the cars we drive today are highly derivative, rarely innovative, and always evolutionary.

The ND was and continues to be a revolution, even if it was largely a spiritual revival based on the idea of ​​the first MX-5. There’s nothing else like the Miata.

As night fell, and I drove through another lonely valley in California, I felt like I had finally connected to ND. Not just as a sports car, but as a therapeutic object. Whatever pity I had inside me, that little red car answered. When the Cuyama Highway became State Route 33, I looked forward to the highlight of the trip: the stunning Lockwood Valley Road.

Unfortunately, it was closed. Normally, this would be a shame. But I am happy to retrace my steps and return to the horizon from which I had just emerged. I thought spending more time with Miyata would do me some good.