Comparison Tests
Last October, we compared the all-new Mazda MX-5 and Pontiac Solstice — for about eight hours. That wasn't enough time to settle the dispute. We were still messing around with the Solstice's knurled seatback control when a Pontiac emissary arrived, demanding the return of his keys. And, in any event, finding suitably twisty roads in Michigan's farmland is like finding Prince Charles's riding crop in a box of Cracker Jack. Or is it Camilla who controls the whereabouts of the royal riding crop?
So we don't apologize for this MX-5/Solstice redux. They're like the Accord and Camry of affordable roadsters, competing for identical turf. Both are front-engine four-cylinder rear-drive two-seaters with manually lowered tops. Their power outputs are within seven horsepower of each other, they offer nearly identical weight distribution, and they're within a tenth of an inch in length. And both are — well, in this case — red.
Although Mazda has produced 720,000 Miatas since 1989, the company regards the Solstice (and the Saturn Sky, which will debut next spring) as the deadliest of competition. Want proof? Mazda has already conceded that Europe will shortly displace North America as the MX-5's main market. So if you spy the former Ms. Parker Bowles mercilessly whipping an MX-5 down the lanes between Didcot and Banbury Cross, blame the "We Build Excitement" guys.
Our two little roadsters felt like tail-wagging, ingratiating puppies. So it was admittedly peculiar to test them in conjunction with the rabid pit bulls of sports cardom, the Corvette Z06 and Dodge Viper SRT10 coupe (see our comparison test). It was like Barney Fife and Peter Pan sitting ringside as Mike Tyson and Goldberg chewed off each other's ears.
Consider: At Grattan Raceway Park, where the big dogs could be safely let off their leads, the Corvette was entering the braking zone for Turn One at 145 mph. At the same point, the MX-5 was humming along at 106, the Solstice at 104. But neither did the little dogs evince heart-stopping snap oversteer, as did the Z06, and neither of the pups inflicted burns on palms and thighs, as did the Viper.
More important, the Mazda and the Pontiac demolished our southern-Ohio Hocking-heim Ring as comprehensively as the critics demolished Animal House. Both roadsters encouraged their drivers to experiment with braking points, gears, early apexes, late apexes, induced understeer, lift-throttle oversteer — even as their grinning pilots glimpsed overflying sandhill cranes and overhanging hemlocks. In contrast, the Corvette and the Viper demanded the sort of concentration familiar to rookie neurosurgeons. Both required perfect apexes and moments of braking so brutal as to produce flop sweat. Both obscured vital sightlines and emitted an exhaust roar that drew civilian frowns. And both required multiple trips to the region's lone BP station, an ignoble locus in which to sit immobile as the little dogs whizzed past like skinny whippets.
In the diminutive roadsters, it was easy to establish a gratifying rhythm. Their shifters were quick, their clutches light, their steering racks communicative, their brakes easy to modulate, their throttle tip-in so smooth as to go unnoticed. But in the Corvette and Viper, the rhythm was more of the NHRA Top Fuel variety. Floor the throttle out of a turn and the big dogs exploded ballistically for 100 or so yards, until the next turn loomed ominously and 40 mph had to be scrubbed in about as many feet, followed by a 1.00-g turn at a speed so huge that if an unseen patch of sand or an inattentive canine were unfortunately to occupy your path, the outcome would be remembered not for months but years.
Whenever we parked all four cars at the pumps, onlookers directed 90 percent of their lust and slavering at the Vette and Viper. But in multiple decades of hustling cars through Ohio's Hocking Hills, nothing has been more fun than the MX-5 and Solstice, with the exception of the cars in a comparo we conducted in July 2004 ("Extreme Sports"). In that test: a faux Cobra, a Caterham Seven, a Honda S2000, a Lotus Elise, and — what's this? — the Mazdaspeed Miata. There's a lesson there.
