In bold - go for it!!! ha ha ha
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How many 4 figures though! What do you think the first number would be? Mint 1992 on 15,000 miles.
I meant the Fleabay Bug actually…
Ok. I suppose they are both worth 4 figures!
Huge improvement obviously, but it still looks like someone has forgotten the lacquer and polished the base colour.
Maybe it’s just the picture.
VERY good going for such a small amount of time!
Did “flat red” ever have a clear coat folks?
Just a wee bit concerned paint has gone as far as it can…or will do.
It’s still an amazing transformation.
Thank you.
Just doing my best before considering a spray job!
That car looks so nice.
Thank you. Very kind words. Lovely to make something so broken look pretty on the streets again!
Trying not to get attached! I’d have one for every day of the week if there was 7 marks.
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When all this is over, pay to get it mopped.
Back in 2000, after someone torched my first MX5 at a MX5OC club meet(yes, it happened), I brought a 1991 red S-Spec, imported in 1991. The previous owner was the manager of a Lisburn car tuning shop blinged it up with wheels and Remus xhaust. I reckon got the lads in the workshop to give it a machine polish every month. It was very shiney, but also the paint was a bit thin looking in places.
Likely the paint on your car, besides your dabbling with Tcut equivalent, has never been machine polished since the factory, so it will take it, and probably respond well. Paying someone who knows what they are doing would be a good investment. I’d stick to my initial estimate that this is a £5,000 car.
The original SAZ9961 in 2000, pretty much as brought
17" wheels sold off to go on someone’s Punto, better 14" Watanabes, and stripes. Style Bar was something I collected from Racing Beat while in California
2004 I had it repainted (cheap £900 job), after a few seasons hillclimbing it. Now had a 6-point rollbar and 15" Mk1 wheels
One of the final shots before the car was sold on with a new ID of J485GAL in 2005. It might still be around. MOT history is conflicting, as to whether its someones shed
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We need to hear the story about your first MX-5 being torched at a meet, please! I can’t begin to imagine how that happened!
It was a long time ago, in Northern Ireland (I was the AC then). It was a mid-week monthly meet at the Ivanhoe Hotel in Saintfield (its a smart hotel, busy carpark). We had parked up in a row, as you do at club meetings. We had some new members that evening. Usual banter in the hotel lounge over coffee, one of the guys went out to fetch something from his car, and asked who had left. No one had left. My car was gone, the two either side had smashed windows, and one had a jammied door look, twisting the door skin. So, called the police, a passing (as it was then) RUC patrol pulled over, and I gave the details. But as I was doing that, it came through on the police radio they had found the car on fire, fire brigade in attendance. I could go look at it if I wanted, no forensics.
We convoyed, for some reason, at 10 at night to gawp at the still smoking car. I did what anyone would do, and see if my work bag was still there in the smoking mass. it was, everything gone. Naturally I started kicking the bejesus out of the car. Locals driving past looked a bit shocked, as if we were some impromptu paramilitary checkpoint. Cops told me the miscreants had probably been racing, tank slapper out of a turn, ditched it and torched with a rag from the petrol tank. They were probably sat in a pub just down the road, but it was a pub the police weren’t willing to enter. That’s how it was at that time.
The two other members who were affected. One was a new member, he gave me a lift home, but we never saw him again. The other was an ex-Para, and took it on the chin. He didn’t have much money, so we helped him fix up the car, which he loved.
The car sat by the road for a couple of weeks, before it was recovered.
The car in happier times
Alongside the Para’s car
After being torched. I suppose thenumberplate holder was salvagable.
Worse, when it was recovered, it was sent to a garage near my house, and dumped by a skip. And, as it was an import, no loan car. Once the settlement was agreed, no loan car. So I had to walk past it everyday when catching the train to work.
A club member kindly loaned me a Subaru Justy for my car hunt. It was early 2000, and, like a lot of us, I was all booked to go to the Club Millenium event on the IOM. I was determined to go, so getting another MX5 was never in doubt. Insurance people sent around an investigator, because I had literally changed insurers a week before. They took away photos of the car, which I never got back, as well as the really cool custom cast key it came with from Japan. Never got that back either. Car was purchased in 1997 for £9k, and it was during a time when the whole MX5-Roadster insurance issue became an issue. I was insured with Mazda’s insurers in Northern Ireland, who had said they were no longer insuring imports, and to take my business elsewhere. There was literally just one insurer in the Province who could cover me.
I was worried the settlement would leave me shortchanged, judged on how some of the assessors were estimating the value of cars (literally speaking to mates n the trade over a pint!). IN the end, £6500 back was very fair. I had initially thought, 3 years on, I’d be able to take a trip to Dublin, go to the vast importer, Mototec, and take my pick of the finest Roadster for a bargain cash price.No such luck. 500 cars in a yard, all the Roadsters were junk, including one with a very bent chassis. Good cars were being sold at sea, and not even being offloaded in Ireland.
So I found a replacement close to home, and had enough from the insurance settlement left over to get a new roof, and some toys for it, while on a conference in LA (lugging a roof, strut brace and style bar as excess baggage on BA, with my PhD student in tow).
We decided the mistake was to include the location of the meet on our club website. No other cars were touched in the carpark, just the MX5s.
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That’s absolutely mental! Some people just have no respect for others or their possessions. I’ve had a couple of my previous cars interfered with, but never stolen, taken for a joyride, and then torched! A real shame, looked like a cracking car.