What a beautiful convertible, I’m sure you will have as much enjoyment with the Miata.
Sad to see so many companies dropping their top down sports cars. I hope Mazda continues building and supporting sports car enthusiasts!
Great. I have never thought to check it.
Bruce
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Gorgeous Stag @BruceW that generation of British sports cars (from late 1950’s to late 1970’s were pretty much unparalled…
Mazda I think took a lot of influence from British roadsters of that period, which is why it is so compelling.
J
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…. although wisely not their engineering or build quality. Of course the Stag was actually designed by an Italian (Michelotti).
I had a silver MK2 MX5 from new. All round one of the best cars I have owned in terms of being exactly fit for purpose. Not the fastest, most comfy, or most luxurious but always a pleasure. I am slightly less convinced by the design of newer iterations but the concept of a small affordable roadster remains unmatched by other brands. I suspect this may be the last though? Mazda a brand struggling for survival perhaps, they have resorted to a rebranded Chinese EV to gain a foothold in that market.
Bruce
Out of curiosity, as the French are very proud of it, what do you think of the new Alpine Renault. I don’t have one and don’t have neither a car. But like watching some sometimes.
I think it’s a bit more expensive vs the Mazda, but not on Porsche or Jaguar level price. It gives the impression to be fun to drive it.
If you mean Alpine A110 it has just been discontinued. In the UK prices were very much Porsche level, more than a Cayman for instance. It was very well regarded here by reviewers but less so owners. I lurked on the Alpine Forum for a while as I was considering the 390 EV saloon. Lots of grumbles about Alpine after care, reliability etc although people loved the A110 when it worked!
The A110 replacement is an EV, launched later this year I think.
Bruce
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We did this and were astonished to discover my mothers 1969 Mini and my fathers 1973 Jag still on the road.
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I certainly was pleased to see the Alpine name back and it certainly looked like it would be an entertaining car to drive and it’s quite distinctive and pretty. It was always a bit more expensive than the GT86/MX5 though and I think it was perhaps a little too close to a Cayman in price to be a big success.
To be honest though it amazes me that the market for small affordable sports cars has declined so much - the MX5 is pretty much the last man standing. I know from my teens onwards I drooled over sports cars and wanted nothing else more. The Lotus Esprit Turbo was and always will be king of the hill for me, after I saw Roger Moore sweep into Cortina D’Amprezza in his burgundy Esprit complete with the coolest ski mountings ever designed for a car!
I just find it hard to understand where all the young people have gone who crave a proper sports car. To me it was always about the beauty/lines/glamour of them, the image, the uncompromised handling, the lightness and the power. A factor too I suspect in my young brain was the way they are really only designed for two people - they totally reject the concept of transporting children! It’s all about blasting your beautiful girl or boyfriend across continents to be at a romantic hotel for a dawn breakfast on the shores of Lake Annecy with just enough luggage space for a toothbrush and a clean pair of underpants! They just project an image I suppose of raffish glamour, a bit of the old 007 magic!
Yes I know a BMW M3 is an astonishing and capable machine, the Nissan GT-R is a sublime creation, but I don’t lust after them the way I lust after an Esprit, Griffith, Mclaren or Aston Vantage.
Has any car ever looked cooler than this?
I have often wondered if I should buy an Esprit because it always has been my dream car, but the tales of reliability woes put me off. The one good thing TVR did (at least in the wedge/S/Griffith/Chimaera era was use a mass produced engine so at least that part was properly engineered and spares were unlikely to ever be an issue.
@BruceW I totally agree re British roadster build quality! I’ve had an MR2 GT-T Bar, two Toyota GT86’s and now an MX5 ND2 and every single one of them has been staggeringly reliable over probably 200 000 miles. The same can never be said about any British car I have ever owned! It’s interesting you liked the early variants of the MX5 best. To me I would probably say the ND 4th gen is the first one I really loved the looks of - the front is darned menacing!
I was pleased to grab a pic of mine with Concorde at the recent national rally at Brooklands.
It is great to find the MX5 owners such a friendly and enthusiastic lot!
JonathanG
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I am not and never will be a car driver but I do appreciate the thought process around moving on something you love as it’s remarkably similar to the process for moving on anything you love. We’ve all wrestled with similar dilemmas and all come to different conclusions. For me I’ve always found it liberating to get rid of things I love but no longer use. I made sure I had photos of said item even when that was an odd thing to do and I’ve zero regrets.
I was however amused to see that we were talking TVR. My ex neighbour had a Griffith from around 96. It was the single most traumatic vehicle she ever owned and the stories around it and TVR became legend.
The entire vehicle once died at 85mph on an empty motorway. Everything. Electrics, motor. The lot. First time she opened the passenger window it fell inside the door and refused to come out. The retractable roof threw multiple wobblers. Our favourite was when it took her 30 minutes to shut it in a thunderstorm. She then set off only for the entire unit to collapse on her head and nearly kill her. The final piece of magnificence was its propensity to flood the foot well even with the roof on.
She also has the classic TVR issues of quick camshaft rust, engine wear etc.
She eventually lost count of the number of times it went back to them albeit that it was only a short hop to Blackpool from here. What was eye opening was the queue for things to be fixed. It would be fair to say that the known issues were legion and TVR simply could not cope. She once turned up to the factory to witness a full on fist fight between people who had driven their vehicles up to demonstrate issues.
All this to say you appear to have been tremendously lucky to get one of the good ones but no-one’s luck lasts forever 
.
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Great post @mikehughescq - that tale of appalling woes made me both wince and chuckle!! I bet she was glad to see the back of that!
I have certainly had a love hate relationship with mine down the years and it famously broke down due to a failed alternator on my wedding day outside Gougane Barra Church in Ireland, so I never did get to drive Eilish away in it and in fact left my own wedding in a hired Rover 75 - oh the indignity!! 
We then came back from Ireland with it on the back of a truck. My mates didn’t let me live that one down!
Part of the problem aside from the crummy build quality from the factory was the fact half the dealers were incompetent too. So I suffered 15 years of random misfires and cutting out which several main TVR agents failed to diagnose. It totally ruined my ownership for a decade and a half!! I too had the whole thing die on the outside lane of the M4 at 80mph and that’s no fun at all. I left it with my dealer for their MD to run around in it for over a week and still they couldn’t figure out what was the problem.
The solution was found inside 10 mins by a new motor engineer who was recommended to me. He told me to start her up and then proceeded to waggle every plug, wire and connector until the fault occured. It turned out to be mild corrosion on the Scart type plug that plugs into the mass air flow sensor and after a bit of cleanup and a squirt of contact cleaner the fault was gone…
A lot of running a car like this is having the right guy looking after it - Peter Croft is a genius, it’s like having your very own Carrol Shelby. My car and ownership experience has been utterly transformed since meeting him. No wonder dealers call him in as a consultant when they have one they can’t fix!
JonathanG
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Some of these car resto progs on the telly get me looking to see if they are still going.
I’ve been amazed at some old cars in B&W movies are still going.
Even the Iron Maiden movie traction engine.
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Me too. Never owned one though. They didn’thave enough money at the time to build a V8 hence the turbo engine.
It’s the same with all manufacturers as the staff are all on bonus based remuneration. The faster you do the job the more money you get.
My Cosworth only ever had two trips to the local RS dealer, one for a wheel bearing and the second for an ignition amplifier. On the latter time they caused damage to my dashboard by leaving a sharp-edged ECU hanging on the soft fascia. That was in 1996 and it’s never been to a dealership since.
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Any car with Roger at the wheel gets my vote, however, be careful about meeting your heroes (the car I mean), as the one time I had an opportunity behind the wheel of an Esprit, it was a bit of a disappointment. The cramped interior and illegible instrument binnacle I expected, however, what I didn’t expect was how the flat and steeply raked windscreen picked up such bad reflections from the dash top that it was almost impossible to see ahead clearly.
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…the same applies to the men and women, it is not just the cars….
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I retired in 2015 after spending 40 plus years in the Motor Industry starting as a Technician and moving
into a management role.
Back in 2010 I had a VIP invitation to the World Rally Championship in Wales 8 of us were driven to the special stages in a Transit Mini Bus our driver was Molly Taylor a professional rally driver from Australia she was over doing some testing for Ford and believe me she new how to get the best out of a Transit ?.
I met a works colleague who owned an original RS2000 that was always garaged and never been out in the rain. On the Ford stand was the latest Ford RS Cosworth and he said I also have one of those.
He went on to tell me he had a problem and took into to the Ford dealer for warranty repairs they made a right dogs breakfast of the repairs.
He wrote to Ford Customer Services explaining the problem and signed the letter with his name Chairman of The Ford RS owners club. Ford collected the car and effected the repairs before returning the car just like the day it was delivered.
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There is a drive story in Car from 1981 in which Mel Nichols and the late Roger Cook take an Esprit Turbo across Northern England into Scotland to visit Linn and meet Ivor Tiefenbrun. Mel’s LP12 gets a tone-arm upgrade. Macallan is consumed.
It’s a great drive story. Lots of similar cars of the 70s had dark moleskin or alcantara dash tops. I suspect the reflections issue was why.
The closest I came was being driven down the A3 in SW London one night at 110mph in an Esprit S3 and not slowing for roundabouts. I’d not fit in one today, sadly.
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Yeah, I’m thinking Lamborghini Countach right now. Looked great but, oh dear……..
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I did find it interesting that the reputation of TVRs actually went up as they disappeared. Notably because a lot of the ex Blackpool staff established their own companies for maintenance. I believe there are still 2 around the old factory site in Blackpool.
Yes, mine was actually retrimmed around covid time by a couple of the old factory hands who had a workshop inside the old Bristol Avenue factory.
The sad thing about TVR is I think that it was developing their own engines which led to their demise. The Speed 6 engine in particular ended up having a design issue which crippled the firm with warranty claims and I’m convinced that if they had simply continued using reliable proven engines from say Toyota or Ford they would still be here today.
One thing that has struck me as I drove around in the past two weeks is how rare they seem to be on the roads. You used to see a lot of them around but they are rare as hens teeth now. I suspect that many have been lost to chassis corrosion or crashed. The surviving ones are I suspect the ones like mine that have had a lot of care and resources put into preserving them.
TVR built around 3000 Griffiths for sale worldwide, but only 768 pre-cats. Probably half of those are no longer on the road so we could be down to under 200 pre-cat Griffith’s left on the road in England given perhaps a third went for export. It’s hard to say whether they will appreciate as a result. They’re a very beautiful and intoxicating car for sure… I’ve taken some great pics in the past 2 weeks but they’re all on the Nikon so I need to edit them when I get home. In the meantime here’s a pic from when she was in Blackpool being retrimmed.
JonathanG
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