I have been trying to find out if there are any Harvard owners out there. I have put an offer on one, hope I get it. But how rare are they how many of the 500 are still about in the UK.
Howmanyleft indicates about 411 left, taxed or SORN’d:
Thanks for that, the one I have put an offer on is curantly SORN. One owner for past 6 years who uses it now and again. With only 411 she is worth saving. She is in good nick and comes with a hard top and full and short t covers.
It was a MX5 Harvard that appeared on BBC Watchdog around about 1998; an owner brought one, and complained about an extremely noisy gearbox. The MX5 Owners Club got involved, and in the end, Mazda had to fly out engineers from Japan, to find out what was up. They concluded “mismatched tolerances”. Looking back, I wonder if this model was a victim of run-out model problems, as NB production was switched over (NA production was stopped December 1997, NB production started 1998). It was a good advert for the Club.
Really really check those sills; any blebs are likely to be pin holes. Those late cars rusted quite badly.
15 years; 411 out of 465 are still road worthy. Thats a high survival rate really. And what of the other 35 cars? Maybe they never existed, or they are just registered as normal MX5s. Miata.nets’s excellent production/sales stats indicates that in 1997, 4956 MX5s were registered new in the UK, so around 1 in 10 1997 MX5s sold was a Harvard.
On that basis, I wouldn’t put too high a premium on these, or most of the UK special editions (the exceptions being the Le Mans, and the earlier LEs and SEs, maybe the California, since that was a pretty unique colour combination), and not be too swayed by claims of rarity.
Virtually all (maybe all) of the post-1995 UK MK1 special editions were cars retrimmed by Mazda Cars Limited (an entity that was nominally independent of Mazda) at their Kent facility, using a mixture of Mazda catalogue items and locally procured things (like seat covers; no bad thing, as the leather sourced in the UK was typically better quality than that fitted by the factory).
The same argument applies to limited edition Roadsters; the earlier special editions were, to me, more a celebratory thing (Mazda didn’t need to make them), but the later ones were more to support dipping sales (adding value).
Thanks AT. I have had a look at the car, sills and wheel arches seem ok. If the young lady decides to sell I will have the car in my mates garage and put it up on the lift before I buy. What would you say was a good price. Cheers
£2-2.5k, no more than that.
Thats good have offered £1500 tops.
My friends Dad just past away sadly last month and as consequence he is selling his fahers old car, which is a Harvard! And what a beauty she is to…
http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/3542312.htm
I have seen this car up close and personal and its mint… Some lucky so and so is going to have a lovely car thats for sure…
We seem to have two very similar threads running on Harvards, let’s use the other one