!!! MX-5 Miata Of the Month !!!

Pure serendipity.  This is how I would best describe having acquired my Miata.

In the early part of 2005, I started looking around for a project car to work on.  I am an eternal tinkerer of cars and have as badges of honor burned and scarred knuckles as part of the terrain of my two hands.  I was actually looking around for an old American car to work on and ultimately add a supercharger on it. (My fascination with superchargers started decades ago when I would come across articles about it in magazines like Road and Track, Car and Driver and those old American muscle car magazines.)  I had since owned a couple of VW G-Lader supercharged cars in the past.  A VW, you might ask?  I actually started on a Chevy 350 supercharged rat motor way back in the mid 80’s, but my wife wouldn’t have any of it.  At least the VW G-Lader was well hidden in the engine bay away from her ever prying eyes!

For a few months, I looked around neighborhoods as well as used car lots for a project car.  I ended up in Alabang Auto Exchange and the last Mustang I looked at over there had really needed a lot of work to be done on it. Its electrical system was in a state of disarray.  The interior was in utter disrepair and it reeked with that familiar old American, plastic and vinyl laden car odor.  I was getting discouraged about the work it would take to improve the cars I had seen as I wasn’t really into car restoration. I was more passionate about making cars as fast, fuel efficient and as reliable as it can get.

I then saw a black Miata in the car lot and was quite surprised with its body and shine knowing that it was nine years old!  The icing on the cake was that I saw a supercharger when I popped the hood.  When I took it for a spin, the first thing the Miata did on the first stoplight was it died on me with the infamous idle droop. But in that short drive around the block, I was stunned at how much fun it was to drive!  The engine was literally asking for it.  The short throw stickshift was a masterpiece!  I said to myself, this is it! So what if it had idle problems?  It was a great and annoying quirk ready to be worked on.

I remembered bumping into my former grade schoolmate, Joey Almeda who drove a Miata to a Mazda car show in 2004.  I looked him up and he immediately gave me the go ahead to buy the car—saying that it was rarely used.  The former owner, Romy Mercado, was also nice enough to have thrown in some accessories, old OEM parts and freebies after I had bought the car. (It probably helped that his father-in-law is my long-time next-door neighbor.)  Thanks a lot, Joey and Romy.

My Miata, as I expected, did not give me a honeymoon period.  Its quirkiness soon showed up after it was driven  quite hard and totally punished  in trips around  BLTB--Batangas, Laguna, Tagaytay and Bataan --as this was the only way to bring out all the bugs in the car.  With my foresight in bringing spare parts and tools  along with me and my mechanical aptitude, I was spared from actually taking the BLTB bus home on a few occasions! That saying, “if you don’t use it, you lose it” was quite applicable to this car. After a month or so of tinkering, I became quite confident of  my Miata’s  reliabilty. I have since taken it to more BLTB trips and a couple of track days without any trouble.

Absolute  serendipity.  This is how I describe having been invited by Joey and Romy and eventually joining the Miata Club of the Philippines.  I have since met up with old acquaintances like Joey Almeda and Rene Mapua and have been  introduced to  and made friends with members of the Club. I now have etched into my memory that  first fun run prior to joining the Club where I met Chito Frondoso. In light banter, Chito mentioned that the run would be a calm and slow Sunday drive. (I was actually  “initiated” by a sprited drive  around the Katipunan area—where members started gunning it inside the tightly-curved tunnel and my having to keep up with the group without taking my first cup of coffee!)  It has been a great 2005 driving around in my Miata and having met fellow members who share a similar passion for  this great car.