Hi,
I’ve had a nose at all of the mx5 books in my library and although I can find loads of how to ‘read’ your VIN I’m intrigued to know where the ‘splits’ in the serial numbers come? anyone got that other book that gives the info?
Cheers,
Nigel
Not an actual answer to your question, but as an interesting aside… one of my work colleagues is driving the last Mk1 to be registered in the UK… it’s a T-plate!
Not even close. There’s a silver “51” plate Mk1. Now that’s one you really can’t put a sticky plate on [8-)]
Technically, the last Mk1 to be registered in the UK will have been that Roadster off loadedlast week in Southampton.
Rogerzilla is referring I think to a Roadster with an incorrect registration plate issued. Not surprising; I’ve seen 1989 cars on M-plates.
I guess I understood the question to be VIN of the last UK supplied Mk1 which of course excludes any Eunos imports etc…
There is a very late UK Mk1 for sale on Autotrader; registered late April 1998. Berkleys were January 1998, and were all retrimmed in the UK. The Berkley’s twin, the SR-Limited Roadster (316), appeared in August 1997, but there were also white variants(348). Sparkle Green only appeared on MX5s in Japan and the UK, so its probable all the shells were made as a single batch at the same time in July 1997. Actual Mk1 production ceased during December 1997. A really odd number of Sparkle Green cars; 716 cars. SRs were a bit of a mongrel vehicle; no one is sure if its based on a M-Package or S-Special.
Brian Long in his description suggests that the SR-Limited colour numbers were not really fixed, but it was just that customers preferred white. Very odd in the context of just-in time production. Were Berkleys left over SR shells (Mazda; we made too many Sparkle Greens!). Something tells me that the last Roadster Mk1s were white.
Back of my mind also tells me there is a S-reg UK Mk1, from north of the border, that was shipped in white, but repainted by the dealer in yellow; anyone confirm?
Also, BBC Watch Dog in 1998 featured a silver MX5 Mk1; the owner had suffered a very noisy gearbox from new. The top ecehlons of the club got involved, and with the BBCs persuasion, MCL got some engineers over from Japan to work out the problem. The problem, as I remember, was “mismatched gearbox internals”, which at the time seemed really odd. The rumour was that Mk2 parts had been mixed with Mk1 parts (different tolerances). Possibly, this was a really late UK Mk1, with a Nov-Dec build date (switch in production; apparently Mazda would have spent a few months building up Mk2 Roadster stocks ready for the January 1998 launch). I thought it was a Harvard, but that doesn’t make sense.
Bob Hall, the “father” of the Miata, had this to say about Sparkle Green, abit harsh I think;
i seem to recall that geoff walton has a really useful spreadsheet showing all vin.
maybe that would help if you pm’d him
Aberdeen dealer had a used white resprayed yellow Mk1 for sale in 2001… I looked over it for a prospective owner … it was definitely white once but had been fairly well resprayed … only could tell from very few tell tell parts. Not sure where it went and did not pick it up as a late car at the time but it was R***HSG … so there is an R reg Mk1 UK car.
Comments in 2001 after looking at it;
“Good respray job, point to note; passenger front wing may have been reprayed as there is a bit missing by the windscreen pillar, general good job … some bits in the paint (fluff, dirt), boot at the front drivers corner has paint rubbed off with rust, boot lid has been taken off (bolts marked). Some standard corrosion of engine as it has been washed too often (white dust). Black paint down the side of the engine as if they have not taken the engine out… Biggest problem is the suspension/tyres. The wheels are scuffed and badly curbed … cheap and heavy ones too so not the best … the tyres are wide and indifferent make of cheap poor stuff … but they are all close to illegal as the 4 wheel alignment is way out … get this done by them before you take delivery as it is the reason the tyres are close to illegal at 8,000 miles.”
!!!..........................paragraph... quality editor this one......................!!
forum editor is v.poor! … useless editor, cannot part quote previous post… where did they get it from… Fisher Price?
Works fine for me; click “reply”, not “quick reply”.
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Thats my spreadsheet, and it was Roadsters only. Since supplemented by a much more accurate website-based VIN lookup (again, import only).
See http://www.mx5oc.co.uk/forum/forums/t/352.aspx
“R” reg Mk1s are very common, “S” reg ones rare. I believe there is a UK one with either “T” or “V” reg; it’s not clear why it took so long for it to be registered. Some cars get used on the track for a bit before being resold for road use - at least, that’s one theory I’ve heard.
One possibility is that the car was originally registered outside Great Britain (not UK); when I brought my car over from Northern Ireland (within the UK), the DVLA did not issue the correct year plate, because the information provided by the DVLNI was incomplete (I had to contact the DVLNI myself to get that info). There was a lot of chicanery going on at some car dealers in NI at that time, bringing cars up from Southern Ireland. At one Mazda dealer, over half of their unregistered stock was sourced from outside the UK (mostly ROI).
The only story I have heard about track cars being later sold by Mazda were the early 90s MX5 Cup cars.