Hi to all the new friends I made at Chatsworth particularly the fellow Merlot owners. Nice to put faces to the forum IDs. Chatted to ‘Mk1 Merlot’ for about half an hour before we both realised we had already chatted on the forum! I had exchanged details with ‘Vin Rouge’ beforehand and we managed to have a good chat and compare. Also a pleasure to meet up with ‘Nemesis’, the new owners of the stunning ex ‘Mr Merlot’ car (sorry I don’t know the forum ID) and some of the other Merlot owners there who I didn’t get any details of. The memory isn’t what it used to be, but it wasn’t that good in the first place. What was obvious from meeting you all was that it doesn’t really matter whether the Merlot in question was mint, modified, muddy or mistreated, we just love them all. I thought I’d take a snap of each one I saw and finished up with 18 cars. If I missed any please let me know, if you want the number plate blanking let me know, if you want the picture removing then let me know. No particular order, just the order I snapped them in. Mine is P322WRG. Pleasure to meet you all. Keep enjoying your much loved Merlot.
Paul
P.S. Sorry to Mike W for missing his beauty. Added his picture as No.19. Got the lot now…Unless you know otherwise.
Fantastic pics mate and it was a pleasure to meet you as well. I would like to thank you especially for the picture of mine, it looks a lot cleaner there as it was actually blasted in mud . Wonderful to see so many Merlots in one place, at least we know there are 18 of the 600 still in existance.
Great to see so many Merlots and all looking in such fine condition. Looks to me as though if they gave a prize for best turned out model the Merlot would have won hands down. I’m “Nemesis” or Dave and Yvonne Young the proud new owners of Mr Merlot’s H11 GKP. He’s now repolished and put away after shivering in the rain and mud of the M1 ! He’s now had a sex change and has become “Max” the companion of “Maxine” a Mk2 Euphonic. You can never have too many MX5s!
Think you have confused Vin Rouge by refering to yourself as Nemesis. That name has already been taken by…Nemesis. He’s the one with the fully body kitted Merlot, and very nice it is too. Gets very confusing going by these aliases. I’m called Roadie after my first MX-5 which was christened Roadie by it’s previous owners. My Merlot has been christened as Wino but thought I’d keep the same forum ID. Who would want to talk to somebody called Wino? Nice to see that I’ve got you active on the forum. We were all wondering what had happened to H11GKP. Nice to see he is being looked after in the way he has been used to. So you have a ‘he’ and a ‘she’ MX-5. Both sharing the same garage? Are you hoping to breed? Could see the first Mk1.5 very soon. Merlot father, Euphonic mother, should turn out lilac. I’ll reserve judgement till I see it. Think we can all hold our heads high with such a great Merlot turnout at Chatsworth. Looks like the '96 vintage Merlot ages very well.
[not chatsworth and not a full plate… sorry Robbie]
saw a Merlot in co-op car park Kington(Herefordshire) P***PLO. Oddily enough, seen a California in an adjacent cp to there and i believe the new owner is now on here
Hi, great pictures of some great cars. We had a fantastic time at the rally. Hope you managed to get a picture of our Merlot as it is none of the above (P28 RUL). We also had a good chat with a few fellow Merlot owners comparing mods and upgrades we had carried out.
Hi Robbie. I’ll certainly let you have the details you want of my Merlot. Why not ask for forum ID and name of the owners too. Don’t mind giving mine, you could make it optional. No problem at all with using my pictures from Chatsworth. You or anybody else who is reading this is more than welcome to them. You can get them straight from the link below.
DAMN AND BLAST. Sorry about the shouting. I even did a final trawl around the overflow car park to see if I’d missed any Merlots. Don’t know how I missed you. If you have a picture of the car at Chatsworth that you wouldn’t mind sharing then I’ll put it in with the others. So we now know that there were 19 there on the day. Here was me getting all smug because I got them all. I’ll go and sob quietly in the corner with embarassment. Knowing my luck number twenty will have turned up when I come out again.
Look on the bright side you have one more for the collection than you though you had. We were parked just in front of the competition cars, there was also one just on the row behind ours with lots of peeling laquer on the bonnet from the South West area I think. I haven’t had chance to download my pictures from the camera but will post some tomorrow as I am just about to go to work.
Spotted the one with the peeling bonnet and had a few words with the lady owner. She said it got more annoying every time she washed it but then with a twinkle in her eye said ‘I can’t see it when I’m driving’. Let’s face it that’s what really matters. It was quite a tidy looking car apart from the laquer. I think we are all be going to have fun with our Merlot’s for many years to come. Think I must have walked past your car a few times and thought that I had already bagged it with the camera. A front angled shot would be nice to match in with the rest. Trust you won’t mind me putting it in with my others. Will be nice to have the full set in one place as a record of a great day out.
Just looked here and gave my details to the cause. I also posted the following after reading he would like VIN Numbers.
“On the subject of VIN numbers did you know that if you run the VIN number of a Merlot through DVLA it comes back as a Gleneagles. Apparently this is true for all Merlots. I know mine is on the log book as a Gleneagles. Is this true for anyone else. I contacted DVLA a while back and they said they would change it only if Mazda themselves agreed to changing the description of the car. I never did get round to contacting Mazda UK. Now I have been reminded of it I may well do so soon. I also get the same problem when trying to insure and get parts from a Mazda dealer.”
I look at it this way. Of the 19 cars that were at Chatsworth we have the ex Mr Merlot, now Youngy car which is highly cosseted and kept in what is probably better condition than when it left the factory. We have one, Project Merlot, which is a full stripped out racer. There was the subtly modded but very un-subtly supercharged P***URN which looked and sounded awesome as it drove away up the drive. Then we have yours with all the skirts and wings. That’s four alternative routes to take with a basic Merlot. The other 15 Merlots at Chatsworth were pretty much standard everyday road cars. It’s not like you have used the last penny black to send a letter to your granny. Nothing wrong with injecting a bit of individuality into your car. I have seen the pictures of your rebuild and it’s obvious that if you had taken it to last year’s national people would have thought ‘it’s a shame somebody hasn’t tidied that up’. Well here it is and it’s very tidy, very shiny, and very much your car. Fair play to you for doing it.
. Wonderful to see so many Merlots in one place, at least we know there are 18 of the 600 still in existance.
I got a piccy of that one, sorry Paul. You still beat me though, fair play. 