Auto box, ugly nose but otherwise, a rare thing…
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I really like the coupe but couldn’t run to those kind of numbers even for something rare like this. 
It’s already north of £10k and I’m not really sure how. If we’re coupe shopping then:
- Just over £16k gets you into this: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202412237493511
- Just over £20k gets you into this: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202412127210736
It’ll be interesting to see what price the Mazda ends up at, assuming it meets its reserve. I know you can play the price comparison game all day and you pay your money and make your choice, but still…
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Thanks for the links Mike.
I’d probably go with a first generation TT for a fraction of those prices if I was serious about a coupe.
I like the style of the NB coupe but £10K+ is way too rich for my blood.
I’ll stick to my old jalopy for the foreseeable 
I’ve never owned a TT of any generation, but have heard that the Sport with the Recaro Pole Position seats is a highlight: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202501097885537 Not quite a fraction of the price, but currently comparable to the Mazda’s 
Auto box …not for me , not keen on front bumper…but still wouldn’t mind it parked up in the garage purely for it’s rarity
Thats cheap for a NB Coupe. They would cost a lot more in Japan when they come up for sale.
But I would check this sill carefully.
One for sale in Japan right now, a plain jane 1.6 model
Thats still about £15,000, plus fob costs, shipping, duty etc So I think about £22,000 landed.
Very small numbers made. Partially completed shells were taken off the line and converted to coupes by Mazda ET&T, which is basically the arm used for building Hearses, van conversions, minibuses etc.
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Ugly nose, auto box and horrendous wheels.
I’d be very suspicious of the two ‘advisory free’ MOTs since import. How can an import get a UK MOT with a speedo only in kilometres? If the tester has missed that straight up failure point what else has been glossed over?
Speedo in KPH is not a MOT issue. My M2-1002 came from Japan with basically the factory kph motorbike speedo, and went through about 10 UK MOTs like that.
Wheels and the autobox are easy changes. The 1.8 autos were never detuned engines.
The Type Es are obviously a play on “E-Type”, and most were in different colours to evoke a more traditional look. The paint code checks out, so this really was a yellow car with tan VS leather interior. I think about 50 of these were sold.
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The more I look at it, the more it looks like an NB blowing a raspberry.
Certainly, the slushboxes in 5’s are better than most people imagine…I ought to know but I get it people “need” to swap their own!Also a lot quicker in real life than some may expect on kick-down & Hold. As said…it’s “cheap” but if I was in the position, I’d do my best to make in mine…and then set about that inevitable rust. Not sure about how bad that would be…since after all it’s not experienced lots of winters with water & filth getting into the sills in the usual way. With luck, a boroscope could reveal it’s grit blast from those awful alloys. If it is internal, could be tricky as my understanding from way long ago is the rear sill/ wing sections are ( hand crafted) different ? But over all, it “looks” clean. Terrible to say maybe…but the Coop was always my personal favourite! Go on…hang me! Begs for an SC fitting though if the engine is ring & bearing fit enough. That would give it gobs of torque through the bullet proof converter.
NBs in Japan rust like here, just slower. Actually, what they seem to do is rust inside without all the bubbling, then disintegrate. They’re all 20+ years old now.
Garage Vary now offer fiberglass sill repair patches in Japan.
I was thinking this yesterday. Japan has a whole lot of coastline with sea spray and salty air. So you never know if a car has come from the coast. It’ll probably rust more.
Sapparo was supposed to e the bad area for cars, because its maritime and a lot more snow there.
Garage Vary NB repair panel compared to steel part
Also for the NA
Glued on sills. Technically they are not wrong, the bit that goes all rusty isn’t structural, but MOT testers won’t see it that way when you turn up with your P40 sills.
The whole Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of MX5s is that they’re cheap sporty convertibles. So a good way to value this as a usable car is to work out what it would be worth as a convertible and halve that number. And then take off the usual £1,000 for it having a dreadful 1970s 3 speed auto box with overdrive.
So was the Spitfire, Midget, B. They aren’t so cheap now… Being a cheap sporty converible is literally not a USP, because there are loads of them; MX5s, MGFs, MRS, Z3, Z4, Spitfires, MGBs, Midgets, TR7s, Copens, Supply and demand determine value. But there is little demand for the coupe in the UK. Also little demand for the M2-Inc cars that made it to the UK, hence all of them are now in Italy, in a very large collection. Don’t think Andreas has a coupe, yet.
You’re making up numbers about the value of these cars. There is little difference in the values of NA autos and manuals.
I don’t think you will get anywhere offering the seller £2k for this car.
The fact is, the UK doesn’t value these cars anymore. We’ve gotten bored of “sporty roadsters” and consequently MX5s in the UK are the cheapest anywhere. The seller is better off exporting, though its not yet legal for the US. Can be exported to Canada. There are a few companies exporting UK MX5s to the US because we are so cheap.
This mint Thai-spec car, with not a particularly low 89k kms is a fairly spectacular 1.7 million Baht, that’s £39,000, with the worn seat
I can find £10k NAs in Thailand, but at that price, I need to accept something with a Nissan or Toyota engine, certainly an automatic, and about 4mil of filler everywhere.
Meanwhile, Thailand has non-speed limited RHD 35AEs for order.
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Most of the other cheap sporty convertibles you mention are no longer in production.
I’m not making up general values. After owning 25 MX5s I probably have quite a good feel for values. My point is that the coupe is pointless and is therefore, to me at least, worth less than a convertible and would just be a more modern version of the GT6. And while the 6 speed auto in NCs and NDs is quite good, the earlier 4 speeds were awful. So bad are they that I’d bet more of this single model made by only one manufacturer are converted to manuals than the total of all other models made by every other manufacturer are converted from auto to manual. After all, the conversion is under £1,000 and adds £1,000 to the car’s value.
I wouldn’t offer as much as £2k for the coupe in the pics 'cos I wouldn’t know what to do with it and don’t see it as special.
Two MX5s I did see as especially special were my 92 V-Special with modern running gear and a supercharger which was worth over £10k when I sold it and the NC 25AE PRHT with a BBR300 turbo conversion which was worth £15k when I sold it. I miss both of them.
NA and NB MX5s haven’t been in production for decades. Later cars with the same names are unrelated.
A MOTable NA MX5 is worth £2k, whether its manual or automatic. Diy costs to convert less than £500; the gearboxes are worth little more than weigh in value.
The MGB GT wasn’t pointless, and neither was the handmade NB Coupe. The Vspec you sold didn’t have modern running gear; it had a 25 year old engine and aftermarket shocks.
You might like wind in the hair, but not everyone does. Many a MX5 is brought with a hardtop that is never removed, because without a closed roof, the chassis is just too loose.
If you have been around MX5s that long, you will be aware of the enthusiast chit chat about the 4 Coupe prototypes Mazda knocked up before the NB. Also the RF, while strictly speaking not a coupe, outsells the regular roadster model.
The 4-speed automatic wasn’t that bad. Maybe you drove poor examples. Most of them have not been converted because the people buying them wanted an automatic.
The £1000 number is just made up. If I look at NA values now, there is no difference in value whether the car is manual or automatic. In the UK at least, all of the NA autos are JDM imports.
After nearly 30 years of owning MX5s, I have a good feel for the original NA/NB models. Not interested in later cars with the same name though. You can’t apply use car trader tricks tom value these cars, given their extreme rarity. 179 were completed in the end. The plan was for 200 Type-A, 150 Type-E, with the Type S (the plain one) built to order. These were meant to be a market tester market, hence ET&T involvement. But the factory burnt down before the test run was completed. The NC, in terms of sales volumes, was a relative failure. The inclusion of the RF significantly grew sales, bringing the MX5 to a market who weren’t interested in the whole roadster thing for a variety of reasons. When the powered top version of the NC came out, that outsold the cloth top.
One of the original clays
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Or buy an NC PRHT for a fraction of the price and get a full convertible and coupe in one car, and your choice of manual or auto and your choice of colour?