Gadgetory

hey guys what's up my name is rotten Freda you guys usually don't see me because I'm actually behind the camera filming editing a lot for John but John and I are the resident car guys you're TechnoBuffalo and about three weeks ago Mazda gave us an mx-5 for review so I asked if I could set up in front of the camera and give you guys a review so let's get started before we get started just a quick disclaimer for you guys Maz is actually just announced a 2016 mx-5 miata with the change exterior and interior so bear that in mind when you're watching this review so we're gonna breaking this review up into a couple sections first we're gonna do design that's gonna be the interior and the exterior we're gonna look at the drive in terms of the powertrain the handling and day to day use price point where this car fits into the market it's some of its competitors and then a bunch of miscellaneous things kind of pros and cons that we liked and didn't like about the car they don't really fit into a category and we're gonna finish with overall opinions and thoughts on the car alright so to start off with the exterior design it's a good-looking car I don't want to be rude about it it's definitely not an ugly car it is a bit feminine all of us in the office kind of agree driving around in public we did kind of you know slouched down a little bit cuz we wanted to avoid being seen Mazda did make an effort to make it a little more aggressive we have to give them credit for that but it's kind of like having a poodle as a guard dog it just doesn't really work and we've said this before Mazda has our cars which kind of they kind of smile on the front so they don't really look at that intimidating on the bright side they're happy I guess so that's that's a good thing in regards to interior design this has to be by far the weakest point of the car it's plasticy all over the place it's kind of a weird layout and and outdated is probably the best word to describe it couple oddities are that the handbrake is actually on the other side so you kind of have to reach around and get oddly close to the passenger's leg to pull the handbrake I don't really do handbrake turns and stuff like that but considering it's a sports car that might be an issue for some of you who do kind of more enthusiastic driving with handbrake hearing and stuff like that another thing is the cupholders and the power windows are located just kind of where your forearm lands so when you're shifting a lot of the times if you have a cup you'll end up hitting the cup and lowering the windows all at the same time so it's not really the best layout like I said this is one of the weaker points of the car John did also have issues with getting into the car his birthday was last week so this might be him getting old I personally had no issues in terms of ergonomics and driving position and stuff like that it's great once you're in but bear in mind this car is very very low to the ground so you do kind of have to you know bend down to get in it's not as bad when the top is down then when the top is up you kind of need to bend your head down a little bit more not the biggest deal but just I'm going to bear in mind if you're really tall so now let's move on to the drive will start with power train this car is a 2-liter four-cylinder engine putting out 167 horsepower 140 pounds feet of torque it is rear-wheel drive so front engine it's a great setup one thing we all kind of really noticed was that this car really wants to be driven hard the engine idles very high and the engine a combination of the gearing ratio it just it just revs really really high for no reason I mean the only way to really comfortably shift is at about 3,000 rpm if the car just really wants you to drive it which is which is awesome because that's kind of the goal of this car it is a sports car it's not really a cruiser which I'll get to later you kind of just really need to wring it out but the one downside of this is going at freeway speeds you would think that okay I'd be able to cruise but once you're in sixth gear going at about 65 70 miles an hour you're already at three thousand three and a half thousand rpm it almost feel like the car needs another gear just kind of just kind of an odd thing that makes it a little bit uncomfortable at highway cruising speeds so integral to handling this is probably the best point of the car the first thing I noticed when getting in was that the steering was super super tight it's it's a perfectly balanced car rear wheel drive front engine handles great I didn't notice when I looked at the car that there was very narrow rear tires initially which I thought might be a problem or a benefit depending on how you like to drive having to back-end kind of let go and that sort of stuff but the power to grip ratio because it's such a low powered car it's pretty fantastic it's a very manageable car if you floor it half way through a corner you'll get a little bit of slip but it's very easy to catch it's not gonna try to kill you if you're going for precision driving it's very easy to maintain the car in control and situations the situation doesn't get very hairy another thing is there is no understeer with this car me and John can talk about this as well it's it's such a well setup car can't really overstate it this cars really popular amongst track-day enthusiasts just because the setup is so great they I know a lot of people who have spec racing cars based off of older Miatas or the mx-5 they take the car they tune it up to get more power out of it and they kind of make the most of installing roll cages different suspension and that sort of thing and mentioning stiffer suspension also one thing I did notice was that the chassis is a little bit looser than the steering itself this makes it feel like you're kind of slipping from corner to corner which is a great feeling when you're really going at it through a canyon or something like that the lack of chassis stiffness maybe down in fact it's convertible so you lose a little bit of structural rigidity but again it's not really a bad thing it's just something I noticed so with this car being geared so much towards performance and being this great sports car and great handling characteristics and everything you do lose on the day-to-day usability of it it's a little bit rough around the edges there's a lot of road noise tire noise with the top up bear in mind so when you put the top down to be honest it's really not that bad you kind of expect the noise and it's a great experience driving convertible we live in California so we're fortunate enough to be able to do that like eight months out of the year easily like drive at the top down but if you live somewhere else I assume it's gonna be about 50/50 and you're gonna have to drive at the top up and it's really not that smooth of an experience price points a really important thing with this car and ours was a hardtop Grand Touring version which came in at twenty-nine thousand four hundred fifty dollars the soft-top version of the car comes in at twenty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars of course it depends on how you spec in all that stuff to me this cars competing with the Scion fr-s which I've driven and I'm a big fan of I can't say driving dynamics wise the FRS is better because this car is fantastic the main thing is the FRS is a lot more refined in the places that this car is not the interior feels a lot less clunky a lot less outdated it's not a luxury car by any means but this car really isn't that great in that department and it doesn't look feminine at all it looks pretty aggressive the FRS does so a couple miscellaneous things and we have to bring this up even though we were overall really happy with the car Ralph actually took the car for a car wash and he did mention and this is pretty worrying that the car started leaking a little bit of water nothing too crazy but it did start leaking water note this may be just an issue with our press car which also may have led to the additional road noise so I really recommend going and test driving the car yourself and getting a feel for it and seeing if it's really for you another thing is the car does have a very small trunk really isn't that big of an issue because you kind of know what you're getting into but it is something to bear in mind you also do get very poor fuel economy considering the incredibly small engine you think of two liter four-cylinder engine would give you great fuel economy but it it really doesn't because the engine is kind of revving out all the time so overall this is a small cheap sports car that wants to be wrapped out driven hard I mean Mazda definitely knew what they were doing with this car and so I can't really knock them for not having all the amenities that some of its competitors might have or being as smooth or as luxurious as some of the other competitors might have it knows what it is there's no clutter the downside is you don't get a very practical car or a very economical one you do get a hard-edged sports car that's really really fun and comes in a fun sized package it's not pretending to be anything that's not and so for that I give it a 7 out of 10 thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed we love making tech videos here and if you like watching and be sure to hit the giant subscribe button so you know exactly what's happening in the world of technology and if you like gaming you want to see us play some games Ophion sometimes kind of badly check out our new twitch channel at twitch.tv slash Tech in Buffalo