Sadly it is time to say goodbye to Roadster ownership and the OC forum (for a while…). My Roadster came to an untimely demise on an A1 south bound slip road earlier in November and has subsequently been written off.
While I have not posted much to the forum in the 7 years I owned the car, I have taken much pleasure from frequent visits and even had more fun on the odd Eastern Region drive.
I will be aquainting myself with an Audi A2 for a while until I can feel safe again in a car without a roof. I shall miss my Mazda, so hopefully one day in the not too distant future I shall creep quietly back into the fold.
What happened was having a too close a glimpse of ones mortality and the sobering realization of what could have happened (the car very nearly rolled), especially if I had had a passenger in the car (particularly one of my children). The accident left me quite shaken and a bit nervous of being as exposed in a car as one was in the Roadster. As I said for a while I think I shall feel safer in an enclosed car.
I fell in love with my MK1 Roadster from the moment I first saw it and never gave a thought to the consequences of an accident in the car until now. I have had many a wonderful drive in the car and these memories of the car will stay with me. It never ceased to put a smile on my face, infact they will always make me smile when ever I see another go by see. I shall buy another MX5, but not just yet, perhaps when we have a real summer or the first warm spring morning beckons.
The downside of waiting until spring, as I believe, is that prices tend to be lower in the autumn as there’s less demand. That said, I’ve been keeping an eye on the price of mk2s in my area (Surrey) and they seem to have risen slightly recently, from around £2,700 upwards to around £3,000 upwards.
I’m not entirely ready to buy yet anyway - not hit the point of needing a car enough to fork out yet - so I’m going to keep watching them. I’m just slightly concerned that this year’s low prices will have been due to the “credit crunch” and that next autumn they’ll be significantly higher…
Maybe the mk3.5 will push prices down across the board, and of course the mk2s (which are what I’m interested in - personally feel they’re the nicest looking!) aren’t getting any younger…
Sorry to hear about your accident - I was just intrigued as to what kind of set of circumstances caused you to nearly roll. It’s what we all fear in our MX-5s and I am not being morbid, just useful to know what sort of situation however random brought you close to such a horrible moment. I think we often feel safe from rolling because the car is low with a low centre of gravity, and hearing of near misses and what provoked them can be sobering.
At a nasty nearly blind access slip onto the A1 at Little Paxton near St Neots, I accelerated into the rear drivers corner of the car in front who decided to slow down at the last second as he merged onto the A1. The impact lunched my passenger front wing, tore the front passenger wheel off and buckled and split the passenger side cill. This glancing blow launched the car up onto two wheels (drivers side), very nearly rolling the car into the outside lane of the A1. Fortunately in landed back down onto the remaining three wheels and ground to a halt against the inside lane kerb.
I was shocked at how easily the car took off, I guess as a result of its relatively light weight. I was extremely lucky that it didn’t roll or that it was not hit by anything coming down the motorway. When I do venture back into MX5 ownership I shall give serious priority to buying one with roll bars or having them fitted.
Taken from a page on vehicle safety stats: “* The 2005 Mazda Miata/Mx-5 Convertible and the 2005 Mazda RX-8 4-DR w/SAB have the smallest chance of rollover out of passenger cars in a single vehicle crash at 7% (2).” The rest of the page can be found here: http://www.motorpoint.com.au/Auto-Safety-Statistics.asp Hearing about your accident is sobering though, like a previous poster said it’s what all convertible drivers fear. Hopefully that translates into always being aware of it, and driving defensively and carefully. I think it’s much easier to become complacent when you’re travelling in a modern car whose engine you can barely hear, where you have little impression of speed etc than if you’re in your MX-5. Especially with the roof down!
Sorry to hear about that… That would be the car that took part in the now legendary ER convoy run to Wales a few years ago… I remember it well… Thats the run where one member went the wrong may up the M5 with everyone else following…[:$] and someone else missed a junction and took a 150 mile detour via the Seven Bridge…!!!