The car I tried wasn’t finished.
Not in the hot-rod-project sense, where nothing is ever finished because you’re always futzing with details. It wasn’t finished in the engineering sense, with the occasional weird habit. Almost all of them rooted in digital problems.
The greatest hurdle in tuning a mass-produced car is now electronic. The modern automobile is a self-adjusting, government-regulated computer, millions of lines of code watching everything from taillights to tire pressure. Hot rodding is not what it once was, in part because you now have situations where, say, a six-speed manual transmission uses a CAN bus to talk to a powertrain control module, and then to a body control module, then maybe an electrical switching module, and finally, a nanosecond later, a lightbulb glows on the back of your car. You have reverse lights, and you back up.
In the old days, that would’ve taken a transmission switch and a wire to the bulb. Possibly two.
The whole thing is designed to work as a system. Replace any of those modern components with something else, and various control modules freak out. Replace the engine of a 2016 Mazda MX-5 with a 525-hp Chevrolet V8, and they lose their damn minds. As does most of humanity.
“We’ve never had this much external interest,” Keith Tanner told me. “I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.”
Tanner works for Flyin’ Miata, a Colorado engineering company that focuses on Mazda’s ubiquitous roadster. Late last year, FM began selling turnkey V8 conversions for the current Miata. In addition to being the firm’s chief test driver, Tanner works in the bubble of a single-car aftermarket. So you forgive him a few blind spots, like maybe not predicting how people would freak out when FM put a picture of a brand-new, Chevy-powered MX-5 on the Internet.
“When we released that first picture of the car on the road,” Tanner told me, shaking his head in wonder, “people just went nuts.” Then FM posted a video of the same car chirping its tires into fourth gear. I may have watched it at least 20 times, because I am a sucker for America.
Miata V8 swaps are not new. FM has been doing them for years, as have a countless backyard mechanics. The important thing here is the use of the current car, the ND chassis. When it launched almost two years ago, the ND was a wake-up call for the industry—in stock form, it was sharper, faster, and more involving than any Miata before it, but it somehow felt just as pure and simple. At just under $25,000 new, it’s attainable for anyone with a full-time job. The ND has so much emotional juju that we stacked one up against a Ferrari 488 with a straight face. It is a car with only two valid ownership complaints:
1. People still think the stupid “hairdresser/gay car” joke is funny
and
2. Power.
A stock ND makes 155 hp and weighs around 2300 pounds. Fun, if you want a balanced, approachable car. If you want to bite the heads off Corvettes and smile through the blood, less so.
FM acquired one of the first American-market NDs early last year. In addition to predictable hardware—gearbox, differential, V8—the car got a new variable-ratio hydraulic steering rack, replacing the stock electric unit; reinforced front and rear subframes; and upgraded brakes. To say nothing of countless other small fixes required to make the swap work, from functional factory gauges to keyless go and a working factory start button. For this they got almost no help from Mazda, technical or otherwise. (“Officially, the stock car has more than enough power” a Mazda PR person told me during our test, standing next to FM’s prototype. “We can’t endorse this. But unofficially . . . God, I love this thing so much.”)
The only noticeable absence is electronic traction and stability control, standard on a 2016 MX-5. FM does not offer traction control on the V8 ND, Tanner says, because the owner of a V8 Miata “is not a person who needs that.” (Also likely because it would have been prohibitively expensive to make work with the new engine.) With the rest of the car, the goal was 50-state emissions compliance and no excuses for drivability or durability.
Those words are so common a claim with tuned cars as to be cliché. But FM’s prototype looks almost factory: parts in sensible places, air between bits of hardware. The fabricated stuff appears sedate and functional, as on any mass-produced car.
Tanner is thus the kind of guy you want to walk a race paddock with, because he has stories of making things fit and work and break. They used a hydraulically assisted Camaro steering rack on the ND swap, he says, because “that big on-rack [electric] motor that Mazda is so proud of is a monster. We had a hard time finding one with the right pivot-to-pivot measurement, pinion location, and the like. GM was happy to provide CAD drawings to confirm. But removing the rack pissed off the headlights, the traction-control system, the lane-departure system, ABS, and tire-pressure monitoring.”
Tanner chuckles while he says this stuff, because he likes solving problems. He told me about reinforcing the rear subframe, tying into the suspension pickup points that are “endangered by burnouts.” Also how packaging was something of a pain. “We were able to keep all the under-car bracing and package the exhaust inside it, but heat control in the tunnel was an issue. We actually shredded a carbon-fiber driveshaft pretty much immediately. I think because we overheated the epoxy . . .”
The car is a sea of understated solutions. The windshield washer bottle is from a Honda, because it fit and looked factory. “Outer tie rod ends are, I think, Buick,” Tanner said, “with some modifications. Clutch master is plastic from the factory, so we went to a Wilwood with a very sexy little machined adapter so we could get the right leverage. Accelerator pedal is Mazda, which was a big win.” Because, you know, the accelerator pedal is a digital device, no physical connection to the engine. See: digital problems, above.
The base conversion costs $49,995 on top of the cost of a donor Miata. Unlike FM’s other V8 swaps, this isn’t available as a DIY kit; you have to send a car to the firm’s Grand Junction shop. The package includes a new 6.2-liter, 430-hp, GM LS3 crate motor, basically the engine from a fifth-generation Camaro SS. It carries a two-year warranty and bolts to a Tremec T56 six-speed, an LS7 (C6 Corvette Z06) clutch and flywheel, and the AAM differential from the same Camaro. The package also includes a new aluminum driveshaft, heavy-duty halfshafts, Magnaflow catalytic converters, four-piston Wilwood Powerlite brakes, stainless-steel headers, functional air-conditioning, a custom dual-pass crossflow radiator, twin electric cooling fans on a custom shroud, Flyin’ Miata/FOX Racing dampers and springs, a custom-baffled Moroso oil pan, and Flyin’ Miata sway bars with adjustable end links.
The base motor is fine, presumably. We did not test the base motor, because the FM boys built their media test car around GM’s LS376/525 crate engine. Possibly because they are heroes. That engine, a $1780 option above the base conversion price, produces 525 hp and 489 pound-feet in a car weighing a claimed 2592 pounds. Post-conversion, 53 percent of the FM car’s weight sits on the front axle. (The stock Miata is around 2300 pounds and 52 percent; a stock Fiat 124 is just over 2400 and 54 percent.)
I suppose you could go with the 430-horse motor, but you could also sit at home all day with your hand down your pants and call it a life. When you’re paying 50 grand to have someone turn a Miata into Holy V8 Death Mother, you do not stop at the $1780 tick-box for big juice. You go directly past GO and budget the GNP of a small country for rear tires, or you give up.
The Drive
I tried FM’s car this fall, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. I got a handful of laps during an annual track event called Miatas at Mazda Raceway. Sticker price on the prototype we tested was $82,125. That includes $27,724 worth of a new MX-5 (GT package, with leather and navigation) and options like an aluminum oil pan ($70), even larger brakes ($725), and 17 x 9 wheels on 245/40-17 Bridgestone RE-71Rs ($1831).
Is it fast? What the hell do you think? The last V8 Miata swap we tested was an older, NB-chassis car with around 480 hp. It weighed 2660 pounds and hit 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. That’s a tenth of a second slower than a Z51-pack Corvette and a full half-second faster than a Shelby GT350. If the ND V8—a stiffer structure with more power and more effective suspension geometry—is not faster and possibly quicker, then this magazine is officially Goat & Wack and my name is Donald Duck. Some things you just know in your gut.
I spent the first two corners at Laguna wondering why the car wouldn’t accelerate off an apex. It felt soft, no rip. By the third corner, I realized it was wheelspin, pure as snow, the tires refusing to hook up. The car was so stable, it wasn’t revectoring, sliding, or trying to pitch itself into the weeds. I started glancing in the mirror after every corner—the car was laying paint on exit half the lap. Viper pace but the approachability of a new Corvette.
In a brand-new Miata.
Let me take a moment and emphasize how wonderful that is.
Laguna Seca became very small.
The added nose weight and power subtract little of the Miata’s delicacy. The car is still a weapon, but the changes make it more shotgun, less peashooter. You trade one type of finesse—obsessing over speed on corner entry—for another. Your right foot now cannot be anything like dumb, because that engine is basically a grunt rheostat. You want big torque? Flex your foot, dial it up. Torque for ages. Torque until the moon falls into the sun. Torque you can actually do something with, because the suspension has usable travel and dampers not like rocks. (Brief PSA: Tuners! Take a lesson: Most of you are idiots and your cars don’t work. Chase travel and tire health.)
The amazing thing is just how at home the engine feels. Slides happen quickly, but you get all the notice in the world. You have so much time between when the car says it’s going to slide and when it actually starts to move, you exit corners one-handed and sideways just because you can. And it’s still a Miata. It still talks through the steering, still telegraphs hints about the rear tires directly to your spine. Still turns in like YES, makes you want to drive and drive, not exhausting to lean on, doesn’t ask for too much or too little.
I suppose I should tell you about the rest of the car. The engine and chassis are so good, I’m not sure it matters, but here goes anyway: The brakes were enough—hard pedal, decent cooling and bite, kept up with the engine. The gearbox was notchy, because it’s a Tremec with an aftermarket linkage, and Tremecs with aftermarket linkages are notchy. You grunt and horse the thing from gear to gear and whatever shift who cares go America. The differential is progressive and gentle on both entry and exit; the car likes a lot of trailed brake for the nose to point. You can rip around shifting 1000 rpm too low and have a nice, relaxed lap, still hauling ass, or you can run to redline and dance on the tires like a madman, the car castering underneath you the entire time.
Let me take a moment and emphasize how wonderful that last bit is.
This thing is special. It is weird and neat and raw and primal in a way that makes your kidneys itch. It holds a megaphone up to the little voice in your head that says things like, “Eat all the ice cream you have” or “just close down the bar already.” It is a mirror into the goofy-ass, Hold My Beer and Watch This core of the human brain, the part that made me look at my toddler daughter on the day she learned to walk and think, “What happens if we feed her candy?”
I want this, and I want it all the time. I want it on street tires so the grip is always a huge problem. So I can show up at track days and autocrosses and just be Oppo Miata Goon Dork From Hell. No goofy little car should sound and move like this. No one who takes themselves too seriously will truly understand it.
Not that there weren’t quirks. The ABS faulted once during my lapping, throwing a warning light and fouling up brake bias until I could shut the car off and reboot it. The steering occasionally glitched and lost boost in the middle of a corner or a slide. A few fueling hiccups reared their head at low speed, in the paddock. And finally, Tanner was only about 90 percent done with suspension calibration—shock settings weren’t final, and the car had too much squat on exit.
But don’t hold any of that against him, or Flyin’ Miata. For one thing, this was an early drive, facilitated partly out of convenience. I was at Laguna for another story, and Tanner was kind enough to offer seat time, noting that the car still needed finishing touches. Second, hot-rodding isn’t as simple as it once was; a car that works this well after such short development time is an accomplishment in itself. (When I raced in the MX-5 Cup last spring while incredibly ill, the dash in my factory-run car was a Christmas tree of unsolved warning lights. They actually gave small black stickers to each team, to cover the lights and reduce distraction.)
And finally, I’ve driven FM’s work before, from simple suspension tunes to tube-frame Exocets. These guys do excellent work, no excuses.
No reason to believe this car won’t be sorted soon. At which point we’ll retest it, because there is no such thing as a bad reason to drive a V8 Miata.
As our test wound to a close, I climbed out of the car and looked at Tanner. He grinned, as if he knew what was coming.
“This is a problem, Keith.”
“Problem?”
“I want one of these and I want it now and to hell with you, Keith.”
He laughed.
“The title on my business card,” he said, “really should read professional enabler.”
I stared at the ND’s rear tires. Nine inches wide and still not enough.
“Smart guy,” I thought, “and dang if that isn’t the smartest thing he’s said all day.”
roud2supercars 