Just four years from now the earliest Mazda MX-5s will be 40 years old, with many of them standing a good chance of still being around for the party.
Older sports cars, for reasons best known to people who own older sports cars, seem to survive for far longer than conventional passenger cars of the same age and produced by the same manufacturers.
Think of how many people you knew during the 1990s with a Mazda 323 or 626 against the number you knew with an MX-5. Now take a walk through the Mazda section of a Japanese car show and the line-up of MX-5s will stretch into the distance while you struggle to find more than a handful of hatchbacks.
Early MX-5s failed to scare the life out of anyone. With just 85kW and almost idiot-proof handling, you could chuck the lightweight roadster into bends at untenable speeds and the car still had a counter measure that kept it right side up and (usually) on the bitumen.
MX-5s when new weren’t cheap though, costing almost $30,000 for a basic car. Similar money would at the time buy a V8 Holden Berlina, although not many Berlina owners were likely to buy an MX-5. On top of your $30K you could also pay extra for the leather-trimmed Limited or add a hardtop for either of them.
For 1993, Mazda installed its popular 1839cc engine, giving the MX-5 a 13kW power boost but no improvement to sales. The later cars still featured the same cabin layout as the original 1.6-litre, maintaining the ‘oneness of horse and rider’ concept around which the MX-5 was created.
Prices during the 1990s climbed significantly, cutting annual sales from 700 to 900 in the pre-1993 years to just 206 cars by 1997. Even so and despite being relatively common, early cars have typically sustained higher values in the used market than 1.8-litre versions.
Prices during the past decade have climbed significantly, with pre-1993 cars in average condition more than doubling while 1.8-litre versions have improved by around 60 per cent.
Prices peaked during the COVID-19 period and have since retreated, although cars in outstanding condition will still exceed $25,000. Good examples of the 1993-98 version offer viable daily transport and remain at around $15,000.
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