The Answer Is Always Miata: A What Should I Buy? Deep Dive

Late To Grid is a podcast about motorsports and getting on track.  Bill Snow interviews the guys and gals who work hard all week to be weekend warriors.  He also interviews professionals in the motorsports community that can help you and your racing.  His audience includes members of SCCA and NASA and those that participate in Track Days, HPDE, and endurance racing.  His goal is to share the stories and inspiration that will grow our sport.  Search for their show on all your favorite Podcatchers. @latetogrid on social media. 

Jim Tramontano created No Money Motorsports – A site with the primary goal to get folks on track, as much as possible, by spending as little money as possible.  He started autocrossing in 2007, started track days by volunteering with NASA in 2012 and moved up the HPDE ranks in his Daily Driver Miata.  He’s in his 5th year racing Spec Miata with NASA Northeast, and you can check out his work over at www.nomoneymotorsports.com

And last to grid, but certainly not least… a shoutout to Dave Peters and the folks over at HPDEjunkie.com for deciding that something needed to be done to promote High Performance Driving Events (HPDE). So, they created a website with the goal of turning HPDE into a house-hold name, and now HPDEjunkie.com is the most inclusive and most current listing of HPDE, Track Days and Open Track events for the United States and Canada! Check them out at hpdejunkie.com or follow them on social @hpdejunkie

In this episode of Break/Fix, the panel discusses the allure and features of the Mazda MX-5 Miata, often celebrated as a top choice for car enthusiasts. The episode features conversations with special guests Dave Peters from hpdejunkie.com, Jim Tramontano from No Money Motorsport, and Bill Snow from the Late to Grid podcast. They share their personal experiences, covering topics from the affordability and design inspiration of the Miata to track day tips and their favorite modifications. The guests also discuss the best and worst aspects of Miata ownership, various racing experiences, and the potential future of the Miata in the evolving automotive market. The episode concludes with lighthearted exchanges about favorite cars and bucket-list tracks.

• How each of you came into “the world of miata”... and briefly give us your motorsports bio
• Miata or MX-5 … which is it? What does “MIATA” even mean? 
• We hear all the time “Miata’s are slow” – fact or fiction? How do you make a Miata fast(er)? Tips/Tricks thoughts on going faster with a low hp/momentum vehicle.
• Miata’s are CHEAP; that’s what we always hear at least, what’s the TOC (total cost of ownership) really like? And where to go for Miata advice and parts? What are some of the best “life hacks” for Miatas? 
• What’s the best/worst parts about owning a Miata?
• In an alternative universe where there is NO MIATA, everything else being equal, what would you choose to race? If you had to start all over again, would you stick with the Miata you have?
• Which generation is the best? Which one *should* people buy? Or why not? Thoughts on the ND1, ND2. What do we think about the Fiata? (124 Abarth). Rumors or whispers about the 5th gen Miata… Bueller, anyone? 

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix Petrolhead are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They’re challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go. Where do you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee

for every four out of five, petrol heads surveyed when asked, what car should I buy? The answer is always Miata. Many folks would argue that the Mazda MX five known to many of us as the Miata is a great option for a number of reasons. It’s well-made efficient and is surprisingly affordable. Some would say the Miata is one of the most popular roasters of all time beating out all the British cars that inspired it, and it’s a formula that has worked for years with others trying to imitate, but never quite capturing the magic created by Miata.

Is that true? Is there more to the Miata mystique than meets the eye? What’s it really like to be a Miata owner?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad, in our first ever double crossover episode, we aim to [00:01:00] answer those questions and more as we chat with returning guest and drive through news sponsor Dave Peters from hp d junkie.com, along with Jim Montano, founder of No Money Motorsport blog, as well as their friend Bill Snow, founder of the Late to Grid podcast.

Welcome to Break Fix, gentlemen. How about we get into it?

Crew Chief Brad: Thanks for having us. Hey, thanks, so, so this is like podcast inception. It’s a podcast within a podcast, within a podcast. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m gonna start off with, you know, we talked about the answer is always Miata. I’m wearing this t-shirt for Blip Shift, which I love that says, the original answer is Lotus Ilan.

Many will say that Miata was born in California, built in Japan. We actually had somebody on the show not long ago that was on the original design team for the Miata, and that was a super interesting story and whatnot. But we talked with him about its British inspiration and he said, oh, well it’s really a combination of cars.

They stole from Alpha, they stole from Lotus, they stole from here. They stole [00:02:00] from there. So let’s talk about how each of you came into the world of Miata and briefly give your motor sports bio, you know, talk about what you do and things like that. So why don’t we start with Jim from No Money Motor Sports.

Jim Tramontano: All right. Hey, uh, so I’m one of those people that 15 years ago, you would’ve never guessed I’d be in a Miata. I, uh, grew up in a muscle car household. We had Mopars chargers and challengers, my house, and I had a muscle car. And then I got a Mustang, almost got kicked outta my family for it. I had it and, uh, started Motorsport with that.

I started autocross and then one of my buddies bought a Miata. And he is like, you just have to drive it, man. Like, just, just try it out, drive it. Got in the car, drove it, and within like two or three miles was like, all right, the Mustang is for sale. And that’s really how I got a Miata. Ended up buying that exact car from him.

’cause he found another one he wanted to upgrade into. That’s really how the, the Miata thing started.

Crew Chief Brad: What year? Mustang.

Jim Tramontano: I had two at first, so I got a 95. Started Autocrossing in that, but yeah, the last year of the 5.0 sold that for an oh [00:03:00] five, which is the first year of the retro body style.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So I’m not surprised you got rid of those for the

Jim Tramontano: Oh, I don’t know. I, I miss ’em both though, so much. I don’t regret selling ’em one bit, but I miss them every day.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I’m there with some of my cars too.

Crew Chief Eric: 200 horsepower of five liters of Awesome. Yeah. Oh

Crew Chief Brad: 2, 2 15. Two 15.

Jim Tramontano: Oh, okay. Yeah. You must have the, the GT model.

One of the times right before I like decided to sell it, I was at a stoplight two lane road. No one sight except for right behind me was a minivan, and I just plastered, I took off from that light as hard as I could. Second gear and I’m halfway through second gear and I look in my mirror and the van is right on my bumper.

It’s like, oh, this isn’t gonna work. From there, just started track days where I had been autocrossing to that point, uh, and then basically jumped right into track days with the Miata. I started doing volunteering and working with nasa, doing a lot of days with them. Really just as time went on, [00:04:00] just then I started instructing.

Then I started time trial, then I started racing just kind of the way the cookie crumbled there. And through all that, I got into doing track days, like right outta college basically. So I had absolute mountain of student loans and a teaching job that paid a lot less than my student loans we’ll say. So I started this whole thing on an extreme budget.

The, with the Miata, I was living in apartments, I was working on it in the apartment parking lot and all these things. And with that I got a lot of. Kind of strategies and tips to really do it on the cheap and do it easily. That is where my whole No Money Motorsports thing came out. ’cause people kind of could see that I was making ends meet and making it happen, and I was getting the same questions kind of repeatedly.

Like, oh hey, how do you do this? How do you do that? How. So that’s where the idea for making a whole blog about it came out.

Crew Chief Eric: So as many of our guests may remember, Dave Peters was on our show during season one, and he told us about how he started life in a three 70 Z Nissan. But Dave, how did you end up in the Miata?

Again,

Dave Peters: mine was budget reasons as well. The, uh, three [00:05:00] 70 Z just, it was hard on the Expendables tires were maybe two weekends and they were big 19 inch three oh fives on the back. So full set was, I think it was about $1,500 and it was a staggered setup and. Brake pads went about as quick, it just wasn’t a great track.

Car had fuel starvation problems and overheating problems, and not of the engine, but like the clutch would overheat because the clutch line was next to the catalytic converter. And, but it really was more about money. You know, I did it a couple of times and realized a couple of times a year wasn’t gonna be enough and I couldn’t afford to buy three, four sets of tires a year for the Z and you know, of course you see 50 M Miatas at every van out of a hundred cars sometimes.

So I knew there had to be something good there. And a buddy of mine got into it and, and he kind of wanted to know what car to buy, and I was like, I, I think he wanna buy me auto. I mean, it just seems to make sense. And he did, and I still had the Z and he let me drive it [00:06:00] once and I was like. Yeah, at, at first it was just kind of a like, yeah, I, I can suck it up and do this and have this little horsepower thing.

Once I had it on the track and then the more I drove it on the track, the more I was just hooked on the way it felt driving it, and yeah, I never thought about the three 70 Z again. I probably, after the first time I tracked the me. Well, maybe not then. ’cause it broke down the first time I took it out. And I think I got three laps in a weekend.

But, um, that was my own dumb mistake, you know, that that happened. So yeah, it really just boiled down to instigation was financial once I got in it. I, I really don’t want anything else

Crew Chief Eric: you’ve told me before. The more time you spent behind the wheel, the Miata is what inspired you to build hpd junkie.com as well, because you were dying to go to more events and drive the car.

Dave Peters: I did start the website with the three 70 Z, but again, you know, I, I mean, I, I’m an honest guy and the whole reason for the website was to [00:07:00] get on the track more often and, you know, kind of help the budget. Yes and no. I, I did have the three 70 Z when I started out. I, I probably only had it for a year before I got the Miata.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll attribute the success of h hpv junkie.com, tier Miata, not the Nissan. How about that?

Dave Peters: That sounds fair. I can live with that.

Crew Chief Eric: And last but certainly not least, bill, tell us about late to Grid and your Motorsports past.

Bill Snow: Thanks very much for having me on it. It’s great to see Dave and Jim again.

Yeah, so Bill Snow, host of the Late to Grid podcast where, you know, the idea is to get people together to, to share stories and inspiration for. You know, grassroots motor sports and, um, share the stories that might, might inspire some folks. And my motor sports background started, um, gosh, probably in in middle school, I would get dragged to sports car races and IndyCar races with my dad.

And, and he was a spectator and really started to enjoy that. And I, at one point in high school, I thought to myself, well, shoot, I could probably be doing this. So my first car was a two 80 [00:08:00] ZX and I joined the SECA and I started auto crossing and just fell in love with it. But then after college and marriage and kids, you didn’t have fun cars anymore for a while.

And I got a 76 Triumph Spitfire just a tool around in. And, and I had a mini Cooper s that I got back into autocross a little bit, but I, there was a time when I was at a corporate meeting and we, and our name tags, we had to write a little line under our name. Something interesting about us. And I, I still remember what I wrote.

I love small cars, so I always enjoyed, you know, the mgs and the Spitfires, things like that. The Mini Cooper of course, being a small car. So, fast forward to, uh, just a couple years ago, one of my employees has a, an amata. Of course, he’s turbo swapping it, and it’s a blue car with a red hard top. And of course it’s got these 2 25 sticking out.

He is doing all this other stuff and he runs in these circles. I said, listen, I’m getting the itch. If any of your friends are selling them, Miata let me know about it. Not necessarily saying I could pull the trigger, but, so he comes to me a couple days later, he says, Hey, my buddy just got a type R and he just bought this [00:09:00] Miata from the south.

He’s got mad dog roll bar for it. He’s got oline coil overs, stainless steel lines. He wants to sell it. I said, well, all right. So I drove it and man. Immediate smile. All those parts were still in the box. So I negotiated to buy the car and I said, you know what? Let’s work on a deal to buy all the parts too.

After having it on track a couple times, I’m hooked.

Crew Chief Eric: So what inspired the podcast?

Bill Snow: So the name is, so like 20 16, 17, and 18, we did, uh, some endurance racing. I got the racing for free if I stored, transported and wrenched on the car. I mean, there, there were days I was loading the car up on the day we were leaving for the track and finishing like simple things like oil changes on the car.

So inevitably we were getting to the track at the last minute, getting through tech last minute, getting to grid, realizing something’s wrong. Inevitably, I was always late to grid. It was my fault. So I kind of thought if, you know the podcast, we could kind of maybe help people not get late to grid. So what are some tips and tricks?

And uh, you know, we had an episode where, uh, Gabe Gutierrez, who races a [00:10:00] Mustang in, uh, NASA events, he’s all about checklists. So he shared all about that, and that’s how he’s never late to grid. Gabe is such a great guy. Yeah. And I love

Dave Peters: his wife too. Ann Anna. I

Bill Snow: just, I

Dave Peters: I had to say something.

Bill Snow: No, that’s great.

Yeah. So it’s sharing stories like that to help people realize, okay. You know, part of it is I can do this, I can get on track. There aren’t a whole lot of obstacles. It’s somewhat easy to do, but the other thing is. What are the tips and tricks that people can share with us to make sure that we can get safely on track, not late to grid, and still have a great time at the track.

Crew Chief Eric: We need to test your guys Miata subject matter expertise before we really dive deep into this subject, so we have a question that needs to be answered. Inquiring minds want to know,

Crew Chief Brad: is it Miata or MX five? And what does Miata even mean?

Dave Peters: I always say Miata, but mine I think was technically still called a Miata.

I can’t remember, but, uh, someone told me it was something middle age, something, something, but I can’t remember. Maybe the guy that was on the design team can [00:11:00] has told you and you can fill us in.

Bill Snow: I’ve always heard it means reward.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you’re being rewarded for driving Miata by the driving experience. I could see that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I, I could

Crew Chief Brad: see that you’re not rewarded by the horsepower though, but that’s a whole nother story.

Dave Peters: No, definitely not.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it had some, it

Crew Chief Brad: has something, one of those names that sounded cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I think the NA Miata actually had a Miata badge on it. It wasn’t MX five. It was, it actually was a Miata the Tic-Tac,

Crew Chief Eric: but I believe it was always known internally to Mazda as the MX five, and then it got badged as a Miata, wherever that came from.

We’ll leave that up to our listeners to write in and let us know where this little bit of trivia comes from. You know, as we were just joking, we hear all the time that Miatas are slow. So is this fact or fiction? And if it is fact, how do we make a Miata faster? Well, let’s talk about some tips and tricks on thoughts on going faster in a low horsepower momentum vehicle.

Jim Tramontano: Look, they’re slow. They’re always slow, and that’s why they’re good. Uh, once [00:12:00] they become fast is the problem. But the trick is to not ever slow down. Home track to me is New Jersey Motorsports Park Lightning. I always tell people you hit the brakes twice on that entire track, and like one of those is kind of a lighter breaking anyway.

Uh, so really the biggest trick for Miata to to go fast is not to add a turbo. It’s not to add power. It’s just don’t slow down.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that the same theory as when you’re driving a go-kart?

Jim Tramontano: Yeah, basically. Oh, I have a go-kart, which is much faster than my Miata though. So

Crew Chief Eric: that’s what I tell people all the time when we’re carting.

Just don’t use the brakes. What, what? Yeah. So with that being said, thoughts, tips, tricks, things that people can do to take a stock Miata and make it better.

Bill Snow: Number one. Seat time. That’s the only way any driver’s gonna get faster. I don’t care if you’re doing turbos, you got nitrous, you got rockets, you need seat time.

That’s that’s number one. Number two is tires. So once you get some seat time and you get a feel for what your current tires feel like, you put new tires, grip your tires, stickier tires on [00:13:00] there, you’re gonna get a little faster. Third brakes. If you can go a little deeper, carry that momentum a little bit further, just touch ’em and have ’em grab quickly my opinion, brakes.

Then you can look at steering suspension stuff. If those four things aren’t putting a huge smile on your face around the track, then maybe you start bolting some stuff on. But those four things I think will make you faster and let you have a lot more fun around the track.

Jim Tramontano: I thought you were gonna say maybe find a new hobby if, if the films aren’t working

Crew Chief Eric: other sports becking, right?

Yeah. But that you actually bring up a really good point, bill. When you get to that part of the equation and you’re in a Miata and you wanna go faster and you start bolting things on, is it really worth bolting them on? Or do you do like Jim said, and kind of just walk away and maybe buy a different car?

Bill Snow: You know, I got some advice. Uh, when I had the Mini Cooper, I wanted to do some Boltons because the track where I was going, man, I’m really struggling with this one turn. And man, if I could have the supercharger sort of gimme a little bit more power more quickly, I can get off that turn faster and have a little bit more.

He said, you’re thinking about this all wrong. You have to get more seat time, you have to drive more, [00:14:00] you’ll get faster. You don’t need bolt on parts. So what did I do? I ordered all the parts in both of ’em up and uh, it wasn’t until years later I realized, you know what? He was right. It is about seat time.

If you’re not getting faster, not having fun with the basics, especially with a car like a Miata, then maybe this isn’t for you.

Dave Peters: There’s always the, uh, lotus philosophy, add lightness,

Crew Chief Brad: simplifying, add lightness. Um, and,

Dave Peters: and I, uh, I’m victim of adding power, but I didn’t do it at the beginning. And it’s not, it’s not boost, it’s just more air through.

It’s not a huge game. But Eric, you were still faster than me. You had a little more horsepower

Crew Chief Eric: and my car was how much heavier than yours. I’m just saying. I don’t know. But

Dave Peters: you did, but you did have slicks on.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright. They

Dave Peters: used slicks though. Used slicks.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s true. I wanna say, I wanna call

Dave Peters: it even I think you had, I think you had a little more power.

You, you were gaining like, I don’t know, six to 10 feet a lap on me.

Crew Chief Eric: It was fun though.

Jim Tramontano: That was a good, that was a good run at Carolina.

Dave Peters: It [00:15:00] was a fun run.

Jim Tramontano: One thing also that I, I found for really making the me outta more fun, if you’re struggling with the power, is go racing with one. Or even if you’re not going racing, find somebody to really do a session with.

I personally got to a point where I was starting to burn out a little bit. I was like, I was looking at Mustangs again. I’m like, I want something with more power. And then I got fresh tires and my two of my friends started showing up with the same car and just us driving together was like the total refresh that I needed.

Like, this is so much fun, you know, who cares? We’re point by Corvettes in the straightaways. We are door to door in the corners and it’s a blast.

Crew Chief Eric: You just reinforced a misery Loves company, right?

Jim Tramontano: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: And, and I’ve heard that and, and it’s true. I’ve run some Miatas myself. We had an SSM here at GTM for many years and it’s one of those things that it’s not that fun when you’re the only one at a de and you’ve got bruises on your left arm because you’re given a point by constantly, especially a place like DIR and Glen and things like that.

But when it’s you and 40 of your best friends that all make [00:16:00] 105 wheel horsepower, it’s a whole different ball game, right? It’s, it’s to Bill’s point, they’re microcar and it’s like NASCAR on a small scale, right? You’re all there together, bump drafting. And since you’ve raced Jim, that brings up a good point.

We’ll talk about ev everybody’s experience on track. With the Miata, but I’ve heard it said before that a lot of the Miata races are nose to tail waiting for somebody to screw up. And if you do stick your nose out at the wrong time, you get sent to the back of the pack because there’s no way to get back in.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Uh, that, that’s really it. I mean the, especially on bigger tracks, if you watch some of the videos from Daytona where NASA chance was last year, that actually even more so at Daytona when the global MX five cup cars were there. So they’ve got a little bit more power, but they still drive just like ours.

The last lap on one of those races was three wide three, and it wasn’t three cars. It was three lanes wide. No, not that one actually. But that was wild too. That one. That

Dave Peters: was same way.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Well, no, but this was three lanes wide. The leading car went [00:17:00] from first place to God. I think he finished seventh in one corner.

He just got freight trained by two other lanes, and it was just like, oh, oops. It’s an extra level of chess that you have to have beyond driving,

Dave Peters: I’m sorry. I mis mistook it for the Seing race because it was pretty much the same ending last corner. I think whoever was in third came out of the corner in first and ended up crossing the line in third.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Oh, that

Dave Peters: was a great, it was milliseconds between the three cars. It was amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: In spec racing, there’s a lot of still one sixes out there, a mixture of one eights. You don’t see too many NC or nd third and fourth gen Miatas every once in a while, an NC with a penalty and things like that. Why is everybody still sticking with the older cars?

Are they really the best and especially for the racing, or is the spec classes just designed around the NA and the nbs?

Jim Tramontano: Well, spec Miata is only NANB. Actually, you can’t run the NCS or nds in our class. [00:18:00] There’s a lot of noise, I’ll say coming up now about SMX, which is the NC cars. There’s a traveling race that’s gonna be happening this year.

It was supposed to happen about two years ago, but you know, COVID. So we’ll really see this summer how those cars take off. And if they do, to me it’s not the same car, it doesn’t have the same magic as ours. It’s very similar, but there’s not nearly as many. So they won’t ever be as cheap parts won’t be as plentiful.

I hope the racing will be just as good. ’cause our cars are getting older and older by the minute it’s, yeah, they have their own, their own playgrounds. ‘

Crew Chief Eric: cause there’s other spec series out there, spec E 36, spec E 46, uh, spec, Boxter Spec 9 44. You know, things like that. So there’s other spec races for people that don’t want a Miata that are still interested in doing that kind of racing.

But those classes are some of the fastest, most grueling racing out there. To Dave’s point, let’s talk about some of your experiences with Miatas on track. And maybe if they’re not, eh, okay, you know, they’re all right. But maybe some of your biggest oops moments, maybe those learning moments, [00:19:00] something that the Miata taught you as a driver.

Something you still carry with you today.

Bill Snow: You know, the first oops moment came at a track day I had with the Miata. I pointed by a C eight ducked in right behind him. So this track date was supposed to be filtered for people that had previous track experience. So if you had previous track experience, you could bring anything you wanted, you wanted to, except for race car let, you guys came out with c eights.

They just bought him. Point him by, I duck him behind him because now we’re at the end of a straightaway and he slams on the brakes, the nimbleness of the Miata right out of the way. I have it on GoPro. I, I’m hesitant to, to post it ’cause I don’t wanna stir anything up with, with the ca driver. Um, but I thought, oh my gosh.

Just, you know, the horsepower difference between the two cars. The handling of the Miata was just great though. And then I realized, you know what, we’re gonna back off a little bit. We’ll throw a lap away, put some distance the next time around. But those ca eight guys gotta talk into at lunch. So we didn’t have any afternoon.

Well, yeah, I guess one other quick thing that the Miata has taught me about, it’s just, it’s trying to find the limits a little bit. And, you know, getting [00:20:00] a feel for that. And it’s, what I found about the Miata is you can, you get such a great seat feel and you can start to feel when things are gonna start to break loose or, or give away just a little bit and you can dial it back and try it a little bit further.

That’s true with a lot of cars, but I feel with the Miata, for whatever reason, it just, maybe it fits me a little bit better. You just get a good feel for yourself in the track.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you find that it translates to other cars? Or do you feel that you have to relearn if you take another car on track or to a motor sport event?

Bill Snow: Uh, if you’re moving to a front wheel drive, you know, there’s a little bit more adaption to that, but other rear wheels, for me it feels similar. We used to race an E 30. I feel like the handling is, I won’t say similar, but the feedback seems similar to me. Between the two.

Crew Chief Eric: We call that fun wheel drive, by the way, it is a totally different driving style than you guys are.

I I like that fun wheel

Jim Tramontano: drive.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Jim Tramontano: That’s not the one I heard. There’s another one that I heard. You

Crew Chief Eric: must be referring to the nine 11 drivers that they, you wheel drives going backwards. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys,

Dave Peters: I mean, I can say that I, I definitely think it made me a better [00:21:00] driver than I, if I’d have kept driving the three 70 z and, and kind of to what Bill’s saying is, I think what it is that makes it magical is the balance.

Front to back. It does. It gathers up super easy. You know, you start feeling the the ass end come around and then a little flick of the wheel and it comes right back under you. I can’t really speak for driving other stuff except the ZI. Honestly, I think I’ve just driven another Miata on the track, couple other Miatas on the track.

I’ve never driven anything else, so

Jim Tramontano: never lift really is a big one. As you progress to get faster and faster into Miata, you know, it’s easy to drive a Miata decently because of the low speed, but if you really wanna go fast, you need to be on the limit all the time. So,

Dave Peters: full send. Full

Jim Tramontano: send. Yeah, full send all the time.

I mean, I’ve got some clips I keep on putting up clips of, mostly turn one at NJ Motorsports Park, just sideways. Hold the gas car and like, oh, you’re good. You know, just steer through it and keep your foot planted. And that’s translated pretty well to other cars. I actually, I got to drive at E 30 at Limerock last year, which [00:22:00] is really exciting to not have a dry session until the race started at a track like Limerock, if you’re familiar.

But I looped it. My first wet practice session, but you know, you have to find the limit. So you have to cross it to find it. Things translate, but those cars like to move around on the tail a lot quicker than mine does.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel like all the paddock jokes suddenly come out when you say that, like what’s it like to drive a car with torque, you know, compared to your,

Jim Tramontano: I was afraid.

I was like, this car feels like it’s got so much power and you know. Maybe I had 30 more horsepower than my Miata, but also 300 more pounds. But eh, it was fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Bill sort of alluded to something that I want to touch on that comes up at every driver’s meeting, especially as a coach. You hear it all the time, students complaining this and that.

What are your pet peeves as a Miata driver on track? What really gets you hot and boiled? Corvette guys, the ca brake check

Dave Peters: won. You know it, it seems to happen to me every time I’m at VIR you chase ’em from turn [00:23:00] one to Oaktree and they should point you by and they don’t. And then you kind of catch ’em going down rollercoaster onto the front straight.

They probably shouldn’t point you there, but you know, you’re right back on ’em and turn one. And I can remember once probably doing six laps behind the same Corvette. I was so frustrated I didn’t go pull in for extra space. I just pulled in and stayed in.

Bill Snow: The pet peeve is the uh, faster car that that rides you.

You know, you give ’em the point by they pass you and then you’re right on their bumper and the turns, I think we talked about this earlier or something like that. You chase ’em through a couple turns, they’re way ahead and you catch ’em in a couple of turns. Yeah, just ’cause they have five times more horsepower doesn’t mean, uh, they’re necessarily all that faster on the, the track.

I think

Dave Peters: it boils down to egos honestly. Um, they don’t wanna let the 120 to whatever horsepower Miata get by their 500 horsepower, whatever, actually, and I shouldn’t have singled out Corvette guys. ’cause it’s not just Corvette guys. It was just easy to say after.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no, no. It’s the Mustang guys and the Porsche guys and the, uh, Viper guys.

And you can, [00:24:00] anybody, anybody with power than me? Pretty, pretty

Jim Tramontano: much. So, and I’ll, I’ll preface this by saying I’ve never actually done it, but I have very much tried in advanced de groups to push cars outta corners. You know, they drive off before I can actually push their bumper. But I’ve tried, I’ve gotten close.

There’s been two, there’s a nine 11 where if there was air between our bumpers, I’d be shocked. He, he got away from it. That is,

Dave Peters: that is the good side of it, is freaking out the guys with the a hundred to $200,000 car by being on their ass. That usually will get you the point by two. Yeah.

Jim Tramontano: Uh, if it doesn’t, the, the thing that I learned that helps is the next corner.

Instead of being in their mirror, following them, be in their mirror sideways. Uh, and then usually you’ll get a very fair point by it because,

Crew Chief Eric: or a black or a black flag, one or the other. I mean, you know, yeah, it depends.

Crew Chief Brad: Just pass ’em in the dirt

Crew Chief Eric: hunch stook style and you know, to your, to your point, I feel your guys’ pain.

I run a low horsepower car as [00:25:00] well and you know, it’s a lot heavier than Dave’s, that’s for sure. But yeah, you’re there, you’re glued to somebody, you’re like, oh my god. And you know, being an instructor, I, you know, I tell my groups, especially if I’m a group leader, I’m like, Hey guys, these Miata guys, they didn’t transport themselves.

Here they are on you. And their foot is to the floor, like get out of the way. You know what I mean? Be respectful of it and whatnot. And a lot of people don’t respect the momentum cars and how much work it takes to drive one, because we don’t have the horsepower. We don’t have 5, 6, 7, 800 horsepower on demand, like some of these Camaros and Corvettes and, and Vipers and whatnot.

So it is a struggle. The struggle is real, but I always like to remind people to be respectful. And you know what else? Tuck behind the Miata because they are hauling ass and you might learn something. That’s the other thing I try to remind people, follow their line, see what they’re doing, see how you can carry more speed because that low horsepower momentum car is gonna demonstrate that very, very quickly.

Jim Tramontano: I’ve actually gotten a lot of. I’ve given point buys the [00:26:00] fast cars coming up on straights and they wave it off and they’ll follow me for two or three laps and then they’ll present and go the next straightaway. And it’s, it’s pretty cool that they’re trying that. The one thing that I have noticed, if you are in a Miata and you’re tired of not getting point buys, make your car look like a race car, like sticker it up.

’cause since I’ve been in the spec Miata, people let me right by. I mean, maybe it’s because my comfort level for space between cars has gotten a lot shorter, but, so I’m, I’m closer than I used to be, but I don’t really, I haven’t gotten hold that held up much lately. How many stickers do you have? Oh, I can’t count.

There’s a lot. Let me, there. Better be a lot of HPD junkie stickers. Well, I mean, if you got how, how much horsepower do you

Crew Chief Eric: Well that, that’s my point. If he’s got like 20 stickers, that’s an extra a hundred horsepower. You’re Oh yeah. Immediately faster. Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, they’re required

Jim Tramontano: alone.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s quite a few.

So Dave brought up the a hundred thousand dollars, the $200,000 cars. We know that the Miatas, at least maybe in previous markets, not the COVID post COVID market, that they were cheap. At least that’s what we hear all the time. So what’s the true [00:27:00] total cost of ownership really, like for HPD and for earth collaboration?

Um,

Dave Peters: I, I mean that’s, it really depends on what you wanna do with it. I think you can keep it really cheap and throw some coil overs and some little wider wheel and tire and a roll bar and some racing seats and roll with it. But you can be like me. Go down the rabbit hole and just do everything you possibly can to it, which a lot of it we know.

And that was part of the hobby for me too, was I didn’t really wrench a whole lot on other cars working on the miana. I felt really comfortable. So I just kept doing more and more and, you know, I liked fiddling with little fabrication things and so it, it really depends. And, you know, as far as cost, I, I paid I think 2,500 for mine, but you know what, you could, I would think the same car now would be six grand and I’ve probably put 10 to 12,000 in it.

But again, a lot of it was, you know, not necessary just ’cause I wanted to And

Crew Chief Eric: it wasn’t all in one shot either. It was over the course of [00:28:00] years. No, no.

Dave Peters: It was o over, yeah, over probably five years. And, you know, it, it could be anything from hood vents to a different shifter to things that absolutely aren’t necessary.

They just make it a little nicer or

Crew Chief Brad: cooler or

Dave Peters: whatever you wanna call it.

Crew Chief Brad: If we all look back over time and, and start calculating how much money we put into our cars over the years. Don’t start crying

Crew Chief Eric: that, hey, that’s their boat. We don’t do that here. Yeah, no, but only if you wanna be depressed.

Dave Peters: Even still, you know, 12 grand invested into a track car that is fun as hell is still nothing.

Right. Exactly. You know, comparatively, you know, you guys can relate ’cause you’re in lesser expensive cars, but you go to a chin event and every car there is a hundred thousand and up. Yeah. So,

Crew Chief Brad: you know, you do, you’re, you’re nowhere near that and you, you have just as much fun if not more fun than they do.

Dave Peters: Exactly. And, and there’s definitely the fun of running one down and kind of laughing, thinking what you’ve spent

Crew Chief Eric: versus them. I’ve seen Dave’s car in person. It’s very nice. So good job. Well,

Jim Tramontano: [00:29:00] thank you. Thank you. One thing that was wild was my consumable budget for, I think it was the two years before I started racing.

So I was instructing and with my club they had a special where you could do time trial for just $50. It was like a little, like a bump up for the instructor group. There was very few people that would run in my specific class and time trial, but there was enough to get. Max’s contingency and hawk contingency.

So for two years I didn’t spend any money on tires or brakes. Nice. Um, brake pads are completely covered. Uh, and I was only going through a set a year anyway. Tires were, so that was 30 bucks, right? Yeah. Five the better. And then the tires was, were given to me too. So I would run ’em for a year and then just replace ’em with contingency tires and sell off the old ones.

And it, it worked out, uh, pretty well.

Bill Snow: So I bought mine a little bit over two years ago for the car. All the, uh, the stuff that he had new in box and then a set of, uh, wheels and, uh, re 70 ones. I was still [00:30:00] just under 10 grand. And the only thing I’ve had to do in the last two years is we pulled the motor over the off season here just to reseal every gasket.

The rear main was leaking a little bit, the front crank a little bit, I mean, so seals and a couple bearings and a new pulley. And I did some upgraded voter bounce and upgraded Kevlar timing belt. So I’m probably right where David is probably 12 grand total.

Crew Chief Eric: The Miatas, they all come in different colors and flavors like Skittles, right?

So, but there’s like a base setup. A lot of people say I run the SSM package. Whatever that means, means something to you guys, but I, I don’t know, I dunno what it means, but I guess the question is like, how similar or dissimilar are your guys three miatas, which are, you know, all NA and B series cars.

What’s the setup like? What kind of parts would you recommend other people buy and where are you getting ’em from? Like what’s, where’s the best place to source this stuff?

Jim Tramontano: So mine is a spec Miata. I have to run what I’m told to run. I don’t have a choice in it, which I’m fine with the current setup. About three years ago, we [00:31:00] switched to Penske Shocks.

And when I say that everyone I see their eyes open. They’re like, it’s a spec class. They’re so expensive. They’re actually not, they’re $200 each. For the shock. The total shock to buy ’em the first time with the amounts and everything is like 1200. And then the full suspension package, I wanna say, including the shocks is like 2,500 or so.

And it, it is absolutely not the best possible suspension for Miatas. There’s better options out there, but the cost is really low. I mean, that’s what some people are paying for shocks on BMWs. So the cost for the suspension package is low. And the good thing about the Spec Miata package, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them running.

So if you’re at a track day and you’re like, Hey, my car is handling like crap. If you can go talk to a spec Miata guy and say, what, you know, what setup do you have? What’s your alignment? What’s this and that. I mean, you know, it’s not gonna be the same if you’re on street tires versus Toyos or Hoosiers, but you’ll be able to have that kind of baseline of knowledge.

That’s really helpful. If someone asked me what to buy right now, what I would say is [00:32:00] try and find an old spec Miata suspension. Most of us took ours off. We had the Bill Steins where the old style, we, most of us replaced it with the Penskes. And you can get the bill Steins for so cheap, you still have to pay for this, the amounts and the springs and all that.

But really to get a very, very competent track suspension for very, very little money, there’s, you can’t beat it.

Bill Snow: Yeah. I think the best advice is what Jim said. You talk to other owners, you walk the paddock at a track day and hey, what do you run? And you look, you look like you’re handling pretty well or what advice do you have here?

Jump forums can be good and bad. When I’ve got asked some advice, I’ve mentioned one of my employees has a Miata, so you know, he’s been good to say, Hey, run this, run that. A bunch of the parts we just bought. We went to Fab nine and X five for a lot of that. But I’ve heard good things about flying Miata as well.

You know, being track.

Dave Peters: I think it’s definitely a whole different ball game than what Jim’s doing. Bill kind of said it at the beginning, start out with tires. I kind of think brakes are probably the first thing. Tires, but they’re kind of right there together too, is gonna make the, the biggest difference.

Again, [00:33:00] it’s such a different market between racing and track day. It’s, you can kind of do what you want or what you can afford or what you are able to do yourself. And as far as parts, man, I’m kind of all over the place. I mean, I, I buy some stuff from Rock Auto, I buy a lot of stuff from a spec meato guy.

I can’t remember exactly where he is. Somewhere in the central part of the country. It’s,

Bill Snow: it advanced, advanced

Dave Peters: auto Sports. Yeah. I mean, you know, the way I look at it with him is he might only sell one wheel hub type, you know, brand or one break master cylinder brand. But I feel like he’s probably figured out which one’s the best and his prices are amazingly good.

I, I, I got a, um, clutch, the hydraulic part rebuild kit, and I think the master cylinder, a stainless steel line and slave cylinder altogether was less than a hundred dollars. So, you know, he’s definitely been a go-to for me, I bought some stuff from Flying Miata. To me, they’re a little more of a street car site, not fully, but to me that’s the [00:34:00] feel I get that they cater a little more to that agree.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s your setup like, Dave? What suspension are you running on your Miata?

Dave Peters: You know, I, I have a coil over suspension. It’s nothing crazy. It’s a, I would call it an inexpensive, it’s a Vmax is, is what I have. And I, they have several different levels and I have the Vmax Extreme Track Pack and, and actually got those from Fly Miata.

And at the time, and I think you still can, if you buy Coilovers and their Sway bars at the same time, you get a considerable discount. They’re probably in the 12 to $1,300 range at this point. With the sway bar. I wanna say I paid nine something, but that’s been five years ago. And you know, honestly I’d like to be able to speak on, you know, is there a huge difference between a a thousand dollars coil over and a.

I think some, you know, Olins, I think can be almost three grand bill. I think you got a lucky score behind that car with a set of olins did. But, you know, honestly, I’d really like to, to drive a car [00:35:00] with them to see is there $2,000 worth of difference in, in these shocks, or, or am I, am I a good enough driver to feel the difference in $2,000 worth of shocks?

I don’t think, I don’t think I am.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a very good point, and I think there’s a, there’s a fallacy a lot around some of these parts. I tell people all the time when they ask my opinion, you know, let’s say with Volkswagen stuff, I’m like, start with this and work your way up. Never build the car past your ability to drive it, because that’ll get you into trouble.

So yes, there is some, why spend the money three times. But I’m also telling you, don’t waste your money on these 12 things. I’ve already wasted my money on those. Yeah. Here’s 11 of them suck and there’s one of them that’s. Good. Go start with this one. Right? Go from there. So it is a progression and a lot of people just want to go to finished product and then the car is undrivable.

And it kind of leads me into another question about the different kinds of types of Miatas. I’ve seen ’em all right. From the track cars to the ssms to the stance bros with like negative 12 degrees of [00:36:00] camber and bags. And then you’ve got the square Miatas. For a lot of people that don’t know what that is, tune into our autocross episode where we talk to a mi autocrosser where he’s running like 2 55 square on an nb and it’s like, how is that even a thing?

They’re all, oh my, we had

Jim Tramontano: 90 fives.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean it’s insane, right? They’ll get steam rollers and they stick out eight inches from the body, but they’re all set up very different. But it also seems like the community’s very tight and there’s certain things to get and not get. My question coming out of this very long ramble is can you build a Miata that does everything?

Is there a combination that works for the track for CROs for the street? So you can have one car and not three. I know you end up with three Miatas over time, but

Jim Tramontano: I have a, I’m sure you could answer they, yes, every Miata can do all of these things. When I started doing this, I had a bone stock Miata. All it had was a front sway bar.

’cause it was initially by the previous owner built for estock autocross. That was it, front sway [00:37:00] bar. And I tracked that car for two years and daily drove tracked with the occasional autocross for two years and it was perfect. It was amazing. I mean, I was scraping my mirrors. It was leaning so hard in the corners, but that was good.

I learned how to drive in that car. Short answer, yes, they can leave it stock.

Crew Chief Eric: So what are some of the best life hacks for Miatas? Things that you’ve learned? Make waste to cut corners and save money and, and bring down the total cost of ownership.

Jim Tramontano: One thing that I do, that I get a lot of hard looks for is the biggest weak point on our cars is the front hubs.

The more grip you have, the more likely they’re to fail. It’s not an if, it’s a, when I’m looking right now at my shelf, in the garage, I have six pre-packed hubs. ’cause I bring at least three of the track with me. Sounds familiar. My hack for that is buy the $25 hubs. On the GMB hubs. They’re junk, but they’re all junk and they’re all gonna fail, so you might as well buy ’em and repack ’em with good grease.

And then in the meantime, once you have those, keep your eyes out [00:38:00] for cheap deals on OEM hubs that are old off desert cars, off part out cars. If they’re still good, if they don’t have movement in ’em yet, you can still take ’em apart and repack ’em. That’s my one hack ’cause that’s worked out well. Uh, I have a.

A pile of hubs. That hasn’t been an issue in quite a while for me. Now, the other street hack was actually kind of fun. I, you know, I wish I had a picture that I could hold up to the screen here, but Miatas get very hot and a lot of us take the air conditioning out or the air conditioning is junk or it’s, doesn’t work anymore.

I took a, a gutter downspout, the little 90 degree turn from a gutter pipe. And attached it right after my sail window. ’cause even when the windows open, no air gets in this car and I had it attached there, so it would take air from right behind the mirror and throw it right at me in the driver’s seat. I swear it saved my life on hot days and I’m talking street track, whatever.

It’s, it was a, it was great. All for $4.

Dave Peters: It made me think of, I love when I can buy something [00:39:00] from my car at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

Bill Snow: I don’t know. I get such a charge out of it. One hack is something Jim brought up earlier. You know, there, there’s such a huge racing community and such a huge car culture around me is there’s always gonna be a good deal on something used.

Or a part out car. And no matter where you live, you know, you’re in the Facebook groups, there’s constant, Hey, I’m looking for this, and 10 people chime in with, Hey, I, I have one. Or just part out. Yeah. Being able to, you know, get stuff from the spec racing community or from the car community.

Crew Chief Eric: And you bring up a really good point, bill.

Where are some of the best online communities or forums for miana owners if people are looking to get in for the first time? Obviously if you’re in the know, you’re in the know, but where, what’s some great resources for folks?

Bill Snow: So, I’m in Ohio and there’s a couple good Facebook groups, um, Miata Owners of Ohio.

To me, the Facebook groups are a little bit better than the forums these days. It’s just, it’s, it’s more real time. It sometimes I think it’s easier to search wherever you are. Do a couple of searches for some Facebook groups. That, uh, are Miata focused and geography focused. I don’t know if I’d [00:40:00] call

Dave Peters: it

Bill Snow: a

Dave Peters: hack, but there’s a myth about brake rotors that you need slotted or drilled or whatever.

Don’t spend bunch of money on your brake rotors for a Miata Rock Auto, $80 for all four shipped to your door. Um, that’s all you need. That’s it. It kills me when I hear someone say, yeah, I’m gonna go get the big break package, and I’m like. Please don’t, please don’t do it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, your, your stock breaks become the big brake package when you take 500 pounds out of the car.

Absolutely. If anything,

Dave Peters: upgrade to the, uh, I have the sport brakes on mine, which are a little bit more break than what Jim probably has on his car, but I mean, they’re more than enough.

Crew Chief Brad: But what is this? I, I thought Miata owners didn’t have brakes. They, they never use them putting money into them. We use them very briefly.

That’s in front of us. We have to use It’s an

Crew Chief Eric: brake. Yeah.

Dave Peters: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, what good or breaks? All they do is slow you down after exactly [00:41:00] whatever. You know, as Miata owners, longtime Miata owners, now in some cases, what’s the best and worst parts? Outside of the driving experience it, it can be either or. So what are the best or worst parts about owning a Miata now that you know?

Oh,

Dave Peters: honestly, think of a bad, anything bad. I mean, I mean, I’m sure there is the best is just, it’s so fun to drive. It’s cheap. Everything’s cheap for and plentiful and. I guess the downside is they are getting more expensive. If you wanna get into a Miata, price has definitely gone nuts.

Jim Tramontano: My call for the best part is I wouldn’t be able to afford doing this if I didn’t have a Miata.

I don’t know if there’s any car that had, I can get a consumable budget this low and a parts budget this low. The worst part is that coming out of every tight corner, I can’t just drop my foot and go completely sideways and be a hero. Like, I, I really want that on like a de day if I, you know, going for a ride or if there’s, you know, look around, there’s nobody on track and you want to have fun.

I do wish I had a car that could do that, but the trade off to [00:42:00] me is still not worth it, not happening.

Bill Snow: The best part, always fun to drive, always puts a smile on your face no matter what. And there’s always the people that wanna talk to you about your car. You’ll be. Pumping gas. Oh, I remember I had a Miata or you know, so and so had a Miata.

Is that your girlfriend’s Miata? You know, all those sort of things. It is, did you just come,

Crew Chief Eric: did you just come from the Haircuttery? Yeah. You know, all the jokes,

Bill Snow: but the, uh, the worst part is, it kind of goes in line with what Jim just said. Yeah, you’ll be on the freeway and, and I’m not advocating for street racing or saying this would be street racing.

You are on the freeway and you know, a charger challenger or an STI rolls up next to you and you’re like, man, I, I wanna play a little bit. And you can’t hang with them if they drive you,

Crew Chief Brad: I wanna do some MythBusters. Um, but it’s probably directed more at Jim. So in a lot of these racing series, there is a conspiracy theory that in order to be competitive and to win all the front guys are, they’re, they’re, they’re spending a lot more money than the people at the back of the pack.

Is it the same [00:43:00] for the SM and SSM guys? Is that part of the game? You’re Mr. No money Motor sports. Are you competitive racing and are the front runners putting in more money than the back back markers?

Crew Chief Eric: Bradley are, are you, are you referring to this mythical 1.7 liter Miata that doesn’t exist anywhere?

Jim Tramontano: One point not. I would like to invoke my

Crew Chief Brad: Fifth

Jim Tramontano: Amendment rates. That is the best question. That is not just a good question. That is the best question. That’s kind of been my own personal journey. This is my fifth season racing now. I’ve always been doing it very cheaply, but each year I kind of ramp it up a little bit more, or prep or what I’m doing.

Last season we average 19 cars a. And I ended the season in, was it either fourth or maybe fifth for points? I didn’t win any races yet, you know, well I had I think a couple thirds this year and a lot in the top five, top six, uh, which kind of stinks was a lot of six is because that’s right out of to bucks.

[00:44:00] But, uh, I was able to stay right up there in the front of the pack on the engine that came in my car when I bought it six years ago. One set of sticker tires per season doing alignments. Basically myself, my friend David t and Z Auto did my alignment like two years ago, and that’s the last shop alignment I had.

If you spend more money and more prep on these cars, you will be able to go faster, but. Having the spec series, the spec roles, and the prep, you get a lot less advantage spending more money in spec miana than you would if you’re spending money in an open class like a, like an ST class or an unlimited class.

So it still makes a difference, but not nearly as much as anywhere else. We are at Watkins Glen in like three weeks for our first race of the season, and I just bought a new engine, new used engine. So ask me this question again at the end of the month, now that I’m making power, that should be right up with the top boys and girls.

We’ll see how I can hold up. We’ll see if that extra 10 horsepower is worth the money.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the displacement of that motor? Did

Jim Tramontano: you say It’s uh, I [00:45:00] believe it’s 1.9 liters now. Oh. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: okay.

Jim Tramontano: It is actually an overboard, you know, 1.81 and I have to take a, a 15 pound weight penalty, which is good ’cause I already did that with COVID and how I learned how to bake bread.

So I’ve been

Crew Chief Brad: preparing for this. Congratulations on being like right in there with the, with the top guys. That’s, it’s pretty admirable. Thanks. Five years of racing. That’s, that’s really good. It’s an alternate universe. The Miata, the MX five does not exist. What do you drive? Everything else being equal.

What is your track weapon? Your race weapon?

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh, that’s a really good question, Brad.

Bill Snow: I’d probably go E 30, E 36. I’ve only tracked an E 36, but we raced an E 30. It just, I really, really enjoyed it. Plus, although the E 30 pricing’s going through the roof like everything else and parts, but you know, E 36 or even E 46, they’re everywhere.

Parts are available everywhere. They’re somewhat reliable. So that’s what I would go with.

Crew Chief Eric: I like how you emphasize somewhat. That’s good.

Bill Snow: Yes, they’re reliable. [00:46:00]

Dave Peters: Yeah. I’ll tell you what really makes me curious for some reason, is the B-R-Z-F-R-S Toyota 86 i, I had driven one on the street. My dad had one for a little while and it was a nice driving car, but that was prior to me ever driving on the track.

So I don’t feel like I really drove it. I’m very curious about those cars. So that might be my choice.

Jim Tramontano: I have a two part answer here. So for racing it would be 30, got to race the Specky 30. It was a blast. I didn’t rush this sell by Miata after doing it. But they’re a lot of fun in my opinion. They’re more fun to drive, they’re slightly less fun to race, if that makes sense.

Just ’cause the handling characteristics I’ve known at all. Yeah, right.

Dave Peters: But if for a,

Jim Tramontano: for tracking the 86 cars all the way. The B-R-Z-F-R-S, the 86, I mean, that to me is about as close as you’re gonna get to a modern Miata. I know they still make Miatas their formula’s a little bit better, in my opinion. I mean, to not have to worry about a roll bar that you can’t even really easily put in a new car, a new Miata, [00:47:00] the glass transmissions that they put in the new Miatas.

Right now I’m leaning towards the 86 cars, plus there’s so many that they’re selling. That might be our next big spec class.

Crew Chief Eric: Do I get a vote? Brad? Can I throw one in?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, you cannot say E 36. You’ve down that road before. It’s not gonna

Crew Chief Eric: be a BMW, that’s for sure. I’m gonna, I’m gonna stick to my roots and I would say no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I would say 9 44 for God, all previous reasons stated 50 to 50 weight distribution, the whole nine yards. And they’re quicker than E 30 technically. So I, I think I would go with the 9 44. See,

Jim Tramontano: we’ve, I could see that being an option every time that I’ve seen one on track. I mean, there was a two year spread where every time one showed up for our race group, I was like, when’s the red flag gonna happen?

And that’s how we feel about it was a terrible joke because it was like, oh, there’s, there, he, uh, he’s out of the car, but it’s on fire. Oh, there it is. It’s parked over here. It’s just like, ah, man. [00:48:00]

Crew Chief Eric: To dovetail off of what Brad said and bring it back into reality a little bit. If you had to start all over again, would you stick with the Miata you have or would you do something different?

Dave Peters: I wanna pop up

Bill Snow: headlights.

Dave Peters: I definitely would not do anything different, you know, obviously didn’t know then what I know now, but I think I made the right choice.

Jim Tramontano: I would do the same exact thing, street me out for a while, then suck me out when I can.

Crew Chief Eric: Two of you having nbs and one of you having n na, I have to ask the question, are those the best generations?

The original two? Do you have any love for the NC and the nd? If not, why not? Let’s talk about the newer ones as well. We don’t, nobody seems to really focus on them. I’d like to

Dave Peters: drive. I’d like to drive both. I, I’ve ridden in an ND on the track and it’s, it, you know, it seemed pretty cool, but driving in riding’s two different things.

And I don’t even think I’ve been in an NC on the street, but I’d be very, very curious to drive both.

Bill Snow: I do like the NA and NB styling. I know the NC isn’t too much different. Some people [00:49:00] say, I just don’t necessarily like the lines of the NC or nd not say anything negative about ’em. But the one thing is, um, I’m a fan of simplicity and the more complicated a car gets.

The more expensive it is to repair, the more things that can break simple, to me is better.

Jim Tramontano: Bill kind of nailed my, uh, why I like the NA MDs so much. They’re so simple. They’re reliable. They’re so, the NCS had some early engine issues. The nds are having transmission issues. They’re still great, fantastic cars and maybe it’s just me sticking with what I know.

I would love to get in one. I’m not ruling them out for the future as our cars get older. We might have to start moving up sometime soon, if nothing else, just to keep up with the, the general speed of track days. ’cause they both have a good amount more power. They’re great cars. I, I would love to track ’em and street ’em, but I’m definitely not selling mine anytime soon.

Crew Chief Eric: I hear you on that. I got, I’ve gotten the opportunity to run a couple prepared NCS on track and I really like them. I would choose them honestly, a because they’re, look, they’re a little bit more comfortable, they’re bigger, [00:50:00] but the swap potential, if you’ve got that mentality is huge. You could put a 2, 2, 3, 2 5.

There’s a lot of power options for the NC NC turbos they have over Europe, you know, make it 300 plus horsepower. I, I just like that chassis and having driven the older ones as well. When I got in the NC it was a little less twitchy. Because it’s a bigger car. Which actually leads me into my question to you guys about maybe your gut reaction to the ND because it went smaller again, right?

The NC is the largest Miata by far. Mm-hmm. But then they went backwards and they said, let’s go back to the original size. So when that car debuted and you guys got to put eyes on it, what did you think? And what do you still think about it today? Really lot. I liked it.

Dave Peters: I mean, I like the, I like the way it looks.

I mean, not stock right from the showroom. I think the wheels look a little funky and a little small on ’em. But I like the lines. And you know, like Jim was saying, I’ve thought about the NC and ND option as the future [00:51:00] of what happens when you can’t find anymore NAS or N Bs, or God forbid IB mine up, would I go that route?

So, yeah, I’m curious about ’em,

Jim Tramontano: Barry. The only hard stop I have for really the ND I think over the NC is the roll bar is so tough to put in those cars right now the only solution I, and I could be wrong here, but I believe the only solutions are like over $2,000 for a like one specific company that makes a roll bar you can go on track with and it’s not ready for that compromise yet.

Um, what

Crew Chief Eric: about the rc, what about the RC edition?

Jim Tramontano: You have to have a roll bar in those too. Yeah, it looks like it’s a regular target car, but the back of the car actually lifts up to put the target underneath. So it’s, there’s no fixed roof portion. I’ve heard just recently heard that some clubs do let you on track with that.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable really wheeling a car like that without some sort of protection in it. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: because to your point, some clubs allow the NC two, the one with the convertible hard top to be run just with the factory hoops. Yeah. Instead of a roll bar. So that’s kind of interesting ’cause the [00:52:00] NC one and NC two soft top to hard top, all that kind of thing.

Dave Peters: A friend of mine just bought a, um. Nd, what do they call ’em? Rf. Yep. And he bought it specifically to track it. And evidently when you put a roll bar in one of those, the top never goes down again. You have to actually, you know, disconnect it. It is what it is. It’s track cost. Yeah. Why

Crew Chief Eric: spend the extra money for the fixed roof when you look so good

Dave Peters: though?

He did have, I think there was something that the chassis better, or it handles better or there was a reason, and honestly, oh, I know what it was. If he bought a soft top, he wanted to put a hard top on it. And the hard tops for them are like. Insanely expensive. He kind of did the math and figured out that, well, I might as well just buy an RF and go that route.

Bill Snow: Yeah. I was glad to see that it came back to the closer to the original size. You know, if you look at the mini Coopers lately, you know, if you took, you know, an R 50, R 53 when they came back in early two thousands and looked to at where they are today, they’ve gotten [00:53:00] fatter,

Crew Chief Eric: the maxi, that’s what we call ’em around here.

Bill Snow: Um, see, I haven’t, I haven’t been up close to one. I haven’t been in one, so I can’t, I can’t speak to that. But, um, I was glad to see that it kind of returned back to the original idea of, hey, it’s supposed to be a, a small, nimble. Car.

Crew Chief Eric: So that leads into a another variant of the Miata. I, I often call it the Fiat, and that’s the Fiat 1 24 Barth, which is very similar in some ways to the NC Miata, although it shares the ND chassis, it’s actually physically larger.

It’s more comfortable to sit in and things like that. So what do you guys think about the 1 24 spider?

Dave Peters: It’s ugly

Crew Chief Eric: blasphemer,

Dave Peters: you know, it’s, to me, it’s almost like they tried to copy an nb, definitely lines that look like an nb, but then especially the back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Peters: But then there’s some lines that just look like they’re slightly out of place.

To me, it just. I don’t like it, but I think that it’s just very [00:54:00] minute things that they did that make me not

Crew Chief Eric: like it. So let me ask you this, if they re-badged it, changed the sheet metal and brought it back as an Alpha Rome male, hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Would that change your opinion of the fiat?

Dave Peters: No, definitely. I mean, it, it really, it’s a, it’s an aesthetics thing. I’m, I mean, I just don’t like the way it looks. And, and then it’s got what, a 1.4 turbo in it. One’s gotta be faster or drive better than the other. But I, I really don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ve read in the tests and even they did a review on the grand tour.

Richard Hammond drove one and basically, because the fiat weighs more than the nd but it makes more power. They’re basically equal. But the difference is the tunability of the fiat is huge because there’s people like Euro compulsion that make turbo kits for ’em and things like that. You throw ’em on, suddenly you have 300 horsepower.

You have a rocket ship, right? Mm-hmm. So I think the flexibility of the Abarth motor is great. If you want to go back to what we were talking about earlier in the episode where it’s like, I want that need for speed. I want to fulfill and satisfy [00:55:00] that, but I don’t want something that isn’t a Miata, right?

Bill Snow: To me when I was, I was looking at some of the pictures again before the call. You know, it kind of looks almost video gamish. I don’t know why. And a lot of the renderings I saw, I read an old article from 2016 Road and Track or MotorTrend or something that did a comparison. And just like you said, Eric, they came out about even, I have not seen one on the road though.

Have you guys, anyone seen? Oh, they’re all over

Crew Chief Eric: the place here. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Snow: Not here in Cleveland.

Jim Tramontano: I, I fell into that love with it, or I guess out and in the first time I saw one in person, I was at New York Auto Show and I was not a fan. But then when I started to see ’em, I, I like it. It kind of has that old Fiat Roadster look, which is like a little bit awkward.

But it works. It definitely has that look. Personally, I am not a fan of turbo cars though. I mean, I know I’m gonna have to change my opinion ’cause everything is turning into turbos. I’d rather have the normally aspirated Miatas and then I know the ND two Miata. I think they bumped it. What, like 40 horsepower.

Maybe not four. They there was a huge bump for the [00:56:00] second generation of the nds. I like them and used car market. I’m not gonna say no to one, but I’d still rather stick with the Miata version.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a pizan thing. We get it. You know the whole, yeah.

Jim Tramontano: So you didn’t see the guy off camera holding a cannoli saying, you better say you like the fiat.

Yeah, right. As a Chrysler person too. A Mopar guy. I have to like the fiat, you know? Right, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Amen to that. Amen to that. I’ve got a lot of

Jim Tramontano: texts. Why are you racing mes when you could race that? I can’t though, but you’re close

Crew Chief Eric: and the price on those things is, has gone nuts to, oh has to Brad’s point earlier, used car market going through the roof and things like that and, and you know, when you start looking at what a used six speed fiat would cost, you can buy a rag out Alpha four C and have a mid engine fighter jet more power and all that kinda stuff.

So it’s kind of this weird balance when we start talking about again, what should I buy? How do I spend my money in today’s market when a used car from five years ago is 30 grand? You’re like, well, do I buy. [00:57:00] You know, I’ll Mach E for 40 and it’s a brand new EV and get all excited about that. Or do I buy an SSM for that price?

’cause a lot of ssms, you know, especially you want a front runner, they’re expensive, right? So there’s a lot of different things to consider when you get into that. That being said, since you guys are in the community, any rumors. About a fifth Gen Miata coming out. I mean, the nds getting a little long into tooth as well.

It’s been around now five, six years.

Bill Snow: I haven’t heard anything. There was talking of an ng, wasn’t there? Yeah, it’s rotary powered.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s never gonna happen.

Jim Tramontano: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you know me, you know my opinion on Rotaries and I’ve, I’ve hurt some feelings, but I’ve been very Right. I’m,

Crew Chief Eric: I always say if the Germans thought it was a good idea, they wouldn’t have given up on it.

Right. Just, just let’s take the nine 11 as an example.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well,

Jim Tramontano: what I’ve heard is that everyone that blew up, they just were driving it wrong. And it’s simple tricks that you’d have, oh [00:58:00] wait, they just blew up. It’s a two stroke. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’m really curious to see what the future of the Miata is like.

I mean, we’re talking about now, it came out in 19 89, 9, although it was as model year. Yeah. As we talked to one of the folks that was on the design team for the Miata. They were developing it years earlier. Right. And we joked on another episode. It’s one of those cars that was designed in the eighties, came out in the nineties, and now has lasted forever.

We’re talking a 30 year run, and so it’s, we’ll be curious to see what the next decade looks like, especially as we move to EVs. Do you think there’ll be an electric Miata, or is the Miata maybe on its way out?

Jim Tramontano: It’ll definitely be an electric version of some sort. I’m excited for it. I’m about 10 years before I can really get behind electric stuff.

Maybe five years. But I’m excited for that too. That’ll be fun. You just want the e torque. Yeah. Well, the only thing is I also wanna be able to do a 35 minute session at the Glen. Through, but, we’ll, we’ll see.

Crew Chief Eric: That actually brings up a, a great question. Best Giata swap you’ve ever seen, [00:59:00] or one that you lust after?

There’s always that guy that’s got the, well, I dunno that that’s on you, right?

Dave Peters: It’s subjective. Yeah. I mean, the best Miata swap I saw was an NC that had a two five in it. And, you know. I think like most track day Miata guys, you go through the like, oh, I’m gonna put a turbo on it. And then No, I’ve decided I’m gonna supercharge it.

No, I’m gonna do a, a ecotech swap. No, I’m gonna do, and you know, I kind of went through all that and went back to, I’m not doing any of that. ’cause every time I see one, they’re broken.

Jim Tramontano: I wanna try a k swap me out. I wanna drive one because my daily driver is KI love to

Dave Peters: drive one too, but you know, to do a K swap, it’s just insanely expensive.

It’s too much money.

Crew Chief Brad: We have somebody in the club that’s got one

Jim Tramontano: Ah, perfect. Send it my way. Yeah. My daily is at oh seven Civic. I, I have that K every day and I love that engine. I just, every time a minute I hit B Tech. I’m like, I wish the Miata had this.

Crew Chief Eric: So, no, no LS or coyotes or [01:00:00] five oh, it lost too much.

Too much for the chassis. It’s way too much. Why a Corvette? But you see guys doing it all the time, right? Fire breathing, dragon V eight. Miatas. Right.

Bill Snow: Do a lot. They’re always part the panic. Yeah. Jim, cover your ears. I have a collection of, of Rx sevens, which will end up, it’s still a pile and, uh, but, but I’m gonna end up with extra rotaries.

I always thought, man, love the stick of rotary in there. Why not? I’ve seen

Dave Peters: a miana with a rotary and I’m trying to remember when and where it was. I mean, it it, it’s closed on the side of the road. No, no, it was actually, it was a robing and it did break down.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna argue with Bill.

It’s cool. Yeah. But it’s sort of like other people’s kids like, yeah, I’ll play with you for a while as long as I get to give you back. You know what I mean? Like that’s me and Rotary. I’m all good, man.

Bill Snow: That sounds like one of my projects then. Yep. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I do think though, the coolest I’ve ever seen, and I’m sure you guys remember this one, it was out of Southern California where [01:01:00] they put the Hellcat engine in the Miata.

Dude, that thing, I’ve seen that. Awesome.

Jim Tramontano: Let’s see. That car went into a ditch shortly after it was built, and I haven’t heard anything since.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there’s no more videos about the Hellcat Miata, but it was cool for all of eight seconds. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. We have somebody in the market for a Miata. They’re six, four and 300 pounds.

What Miata do you recommend

Dave Peters: you did?

Crew Chief Brad: You

Dave Peters: pulled

Crew Chief Brad: this

Dave Peters: on me the first time around

Jim Tramontano: four. Alright. I got on it an NA or an NB because you can drop the floor, there’s a ready made kit, you drop the floor two and a half inches and you just get an aluminum seat on the floor back. Planet Miata claims they built one for a six foot eight driver.

Crew Chief Eric: Were his feet coming out the popups or what? Right.

Jim Tramontano: Well, it really, it depends. 6, 6, 4 might fit depending on how your torso size,

Crew Chief Brad: the 34 engine zine. I do not fit in a, in an na [01:02:00] in stock trim.

Jim Tramontano: If you come to one of our events, I want you to try and sit. Oh yeah. Not stock. There’s a car too you might fit into.

There you go, Brad. You could wear, could wear

Crew Chief Brad: it. Find one event.

Jim Tramontano: You can,

Crew Chief Eric: you

Jim Tramontano: can wear that Miana.

Crew Chief Brad: The latest accessory,

Jim Tramontano: my friend has one, he, he built, he’s got a drop floor of the seats on the floor all the way back and he built a eight or nine inch steering wheel extension. ’cause it was the only way he could get his knee.

The arch in his knee is to fit. He’s very comfortable in the car

Crew Chief Eric: drive with T-Rex arms, like, yeah. Oh yeah. So that said, Brad, I think we should do maybe some lightning round pit stop questions. What do you think? Sure. Let’s go for it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna start with my favorite, so I’m gonna ask. Bill sexiest car of all time.

Bill Snow: Uh, late sixties GT 40

Crew Chief Eric: oh

Bill Snow: oh. Dave,

Dave Peters: you, you got me on. This is a s Are you testing me? Uh, it was Ja The answer is not Miata in this case. No, no is not. It was, it was Jaguar XK, E, hard

Jim Tramontano: top.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice.

Jim Tramontano: A type B Jag. Yeah, [01:03:00] Jim, I’ve got, so it depends on my definition of sexy that day. Honestly. I always go back to my 1969 and a half Super bee in the green.

The bright green metallic. Woo. One of these days. Mopar, man. So

Crew Chief Eric: see that leads into the other, the other pit stop question of favorite, a classic on this show, which is what we call the million dollar man question or the million dollar garage question. So since you started with the Super Bee, you have a three bay garage, what do you put in the other two bays?

Jim Tramontano: Oh, that’s easy. Two spec Miatas. Because if I have that kind of cash in the beginning. There’s no way I’ll make it through a weekend without crashing one of the spec Miatas, when you have a second one in the garage, you will win a lot of races knowing you have a second one in the garage.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s called No fear.

Jim Tramontano: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Dave, what do you put in the other two bays in your garage?

Dave Peters: I really want a. Spec spider, you know, uh, that’s a five 50 spider copy. I just love that car. And, and it’s attainable. Not at the moment, [01:04:00] but I think at some point I could afford one. And then, um, I don’t know, I probably want a late seventies, early eighties Porsche nine 30 or 9 35, something like that when I was a kid.

That was the car to me.

Bill Snow: You guys reminded me. I totally forgot about the Alpha four C. I think it’s a, it’s a fun car to see on the street. It sounds awesome. And, and I’m not one of these guys that’s gotta have a million dollar car. So throw one of those 50, 60 grand in the garage and then again, not looking at crazy expensive, but something I would love to have is a GT three 50 R.

Crew Chief Eric: Which year though, like our late sixties.

Bill Snow: Oh gosh. Um, no newer, sorry. Yeah, good point. And the third bay full of tires.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? I was gonna say, well he’s got ’em suspended over the cars, you know, he’s got a loft up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: exactly. Tires and fuel tanks. Yep. Ugliest car in the world other than the fiat.

I was gonna say, I already told you.

Dave Peters: No, that I don’t feel that madly about it. [01:05:00] Matador. Oh, Matador. I haven’t had, I haven’t had anybody pull

Crew Chief Eric: that one.

Dave Peters: That’s a good, that was the ugliest car ever. The wheels were like a foot in from the fenders. Um, and it just had no style whatsoever.

Crew Chief Eric: Had that long, got kind all of those two-one trying to, it wanted to be a Buick Riviera, but it didn’t know how.

Right,

Dave Peters: right. But it was an a MC.

Crew Chief Eric: Terrible.

Dave Peters: Yeah. One of my neighbors is a kid had one and yeah, I just remember that being, so that’s, that’s, that’s, uh,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s 10 points to Dave for the pull,

Bill Snow: I, I can’t remember the model number, but it’s a Hyundai. It’s got a weird front nose. It’s got a weird rear end. I think you’re thinking of the one where they were like trying to copy

Dave Peters: a Mercedes Jag look.

Yes. Yeah. I don’t know the number of it either, but yeah, those are really ugly. That’s what comes to mind for me.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, it’s like the Genesis G 80 or something like that. The big one. No, it wasn’t a [01:06:00] genesis.

Dave Peters: It was like nineties. Oh, that far back. The size of a cord. I thought, I thought you were gonna say

Crew Chief Eric: like the veloc, the funky one with the, the weird slope back and the, well, that’s pretty funky exhaust in the middle too.

You know, all that stuff.

Jim Tramontano: Not that one. The wish.com. Jaguar sonata, the wish.com. Jaguar.

Dave Peters: Yeah, right, exactly. It looked like, it looked like, you know, you’ve seen some of those Chinese knockoff cars. Yeah, they try. That’s kind of what it looks like, a knockoff jag. Especially when Jag went to those smaller Ford bottom and they went to those smaller jags, but they tried to keep the same headlight look.

That’s what that Hyundai looked like. I know. I know exactly the one you’re talking about, bill. Yeah, it’s a Hyundai Sonata. Is it a Sonata? Maybe it was the first years

Bill Snow: of those, yeah, early 2000. I just did a quick web search of Ugly Hyundai Endi and that’s what you had to go through. 50

Crew Chief Eric: pages. The one he was talking about.

That’s awesome. That must be a popular Google search. [01:07:00] It’s still loaded. Hold on. It’s still loaded.

Crew Chief Brad: You got that A OL working.

Jim Tramontano: So did Jim give us his answer or did he go, I did that. Oh, I’ve got so many good answers for this. But I’m gonna stick, if I wanna go modern, just give myself some criteria. The new WRX.

What are they doing? They’re not bringing STI I copy of the Honda.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Jim Tramontano: Each generation of that car has just gotten uglier and uglier since what? Like the Oh, sixes. The last year they

Crew Chief Eric: look good and it just, but doesn’t everybody say that about every Subaru that’s come out with, with the bugeye came out, they were like, oh, the one previous was better.

And then the one came after the bugeye. The bugeye was so great. This new one’s awful. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: But the 2.5 Rs was a nice looking car. It it, yeah. But that was 30 years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: No.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it was. I do have a two part question. Dave might be exempt ’cause he’s already probably answered it, but any car on any racetrack.

Do I

Jim Tramontano: have a reset button [01:08:00] in my life? Sure. Like if I do an F1 car at Monza or Spa, we’ll say like, as long as I can reset when I crash at 195 miles an hour, I, yeah, this is, this is

Crew Chief Brad: Forza

Jim Tramontano: and you

Crew Chief Brad: can

Jim Tramontano: hit

Crew Chief Brad: the rewind button.

Jim Tramontano: There’s

Crew Chief Brad: my answer.

Dave Peters: Yeah, that’s what, that’s what mine was on the previous Formula One car F1 car in Mon in, uh,

Crew Chief Brad: in Monaco or Monza.

Yeah.

Dave Peters: I don’t remember which track I said, but F1 car,

Bill Snow: uh, I bought one of the Mazda DPI cars at, uh, road America. Ooh, nice. That’s Good. Road America. A nice track. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, that would be mine.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a great segue into our final Miata question, which is if you could drive your Miata on any track that isn’t one of these ones you already mentioned, what’s your like bucket list track to take your Miata to and go run it?

VIR Patriot course.

Bill Snow: I’d probably, I’ve never been to Watkins Glen. Yeah, you have to go.

Crew Chief Eric: So you got mid Ohio in your backyard. I’m jealous.

Bill Snow: And I’m 35 [01:09:00] minutes from Nelson Ledges too, so that’s great.

Crew Chief Eric: You only break in one turn at that track.

Bill Snow: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Peters: Thunder Hill really has gotten like interesting to me and I really didn’t pay much attention to it till maybe last year and, and part of it was seeing how many events are held there and I was like, there’s got to be something great about this and watched a couple videos. So I’d like to, I’d like to do a full like cross country tour at some point and hit a bunch of ’em, but that would definitely be on the list.

Jim Tramontano: I’m probably gonna have to say Road Atlanta. We have a little sim league that we, and we do a lot of road Atlanta and that just seems like a really fun track. It is scary. We’ve done it. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. Yeah. Don’t put hair on

Crew Chief Eric: your chest, that’s for sure. Oh yeah. Call, call.

Dave Peters: Scary.

Crew Chief Eric: You mature quickly as a driver at Road Atlanta that, that’s a hundred percent, but I would say I would drive any of y’all’s Miatas at Brands Hatch.

That’s my vote right there. I need something low horsepower. So Miata would be perfect for a track like that, but on that bombshell. Guys, [01:10:00] I can’t thank you enough for coming on here and sharing some of your Miata expertise with our audience, with our listeners. So if you’re out there and you’re looking for more information about Miatas, I think you just put Miata into the Google and tons of things will come up.

But if you want more than that, you can tune into Late to Grid, which is a podcast about motorsports and getting on track. Bill Snow, our guest interviews, guys and gals who work hard all week to be weekend warriors. He also interviews professionals in the Motorsports community that can help you and your racing.

His audience includes members of SECA and nasa, which is the National Auto Sports Association, and those that participate in track days, HPDE and Endurance Racing Bill’s Goal is to share the stories and inspiration that will continue to help grow our sport. You can search for their show on all your favorite pod catchers or on social media at.

Late to Grid.

Crew Chief Brad: Jim Montano created No Money Motor Sports a site with the primary goal to get [01:11:00] folks on track as much as possible by spending as little money as possible, which is near and dear to my heart. He started auto crossing in 2007, started track days by volunteering with NASA in 2012, and moved up to HPD ranks in his daily driver Miata.

He’s in his fifth year racing spec Meto with NASA Northeast and you can check out his work over@www.no money motorsports.com.

Crew Chief Eric: And last to Grid, but certainly not least a shout out to Dave Peters and the folks over@hpdjunkie.com for deciding that something needed to be done to promote high performance driving events H HPEs across the country.

So he created a website with a goal of turning HPDE into a household name. And now HPD junkie.com is the most inclusive and most current listing of HPDE track days and open track events for the United States and Canada. You can check out H HPD junkie@hpdjunkie.com or follow them on all your favorite social media platforms at HBD [01:12:00] Junkie.

And you can chat with Dave Peters also over on Garage Riot. So we wanna thank Bill, Jim and Dave for joining us tonight on our episode. What should I buy? The answer is always Miana and wish you guys all the best in the 22 and 23 season. And by the way guys, what should we buy Miana seat time.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to [01:13:00] remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction and Panel Setup: The Miata Mystique!
• 02:00 Jim’s Journey
• 04:44 Dave’s Miata Experience
• 07:20 Bill’s Motorsport Background
• 10:38 Miata vs. MX-5: What’s in a Name?
• 11:50 Making Miatas Faster: Tips and Tricks
• 15:01 Racing Stories and Pet Peeves
• 26:51 Cost of Ownership and Modifications
• 30:18 Best Miata Setups and Life Hacks
• 39:05 Finding Deals and the Best Online Communities for Miata Owners
• 39:59 Best and Worst Parts of Owning a Miata
• 42:44 Racing on a Budget: MythBusters Edition
• 45:24 Alternative Track Cars: Beyond the Miata
• 48:24 Comparing Miata Generations
• 58:03 The Future of Miata: Electric and Beyond
• 58:56 Dream Track Experiences and Car Swaps
• 01:09:59 Final Thoughts and Where to Find More Information

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.