Mazda MX-5 Roadster Coupe 2006 Review

Not so much
>> Chassis tweaks blunt its edge
>> Cabin 'boom'

Let's cut to the chase -- the dynamic tweaks are subtle, and chances are 90 per cent of owners and drivers won't pick or care about them. That said there is a difference between the traditional (read: soft top) and new Roadster Coupe versions of Mazda's MX-5.

A little less eager to turn-in to corners and a touch more prone to understeer on or off the throttle, the Roadster Coupe is not the absolute paragon of balanced handling its third generation soft-top roadster sibling was lauded as.

Level the blame at the extra 37kg the electric folding hardtop-equipped version has to cart around but don't dwell on it. The (minor) chassis changes Mazda's engineers have made give the new car a different character to its stablemate. It's wieldy for sure, in a way lesser cars can still only hope to be, but with a more compliant ride and 'softer' steering response it's as if it's grown up just a touch.

MX-5 engineering head Takao Kijima agrees. Kijima says the soft-top will remain the choice of hard-nosed sportscar drivers, but the Roadster Coupe will be the car for the rest of us. In short, the Roadster Coupe is deliberately tuned to suit a wider audience.

And in practical terms, the new car (which, by the way, doesn't get a Roadster Coupe badge anywhere and under the skin is all but identical) will appeal to the wider group too. It takes just a push of a button, 12sec and the locking of simple central windscreen-top latch to transform the open Roadster Coupe into a secure hard-topped two-door. And visa versa...

Inner city dwellers and those without a garage or security parking can consider MX-5 ownership without fear of slashed or weathered soft-tops and without the need to resort to a bolt-on bolt-off accessory hardtop.

The Roadster Coupe's three-piece electrically-operated hardtop is a packaging piece of art. Designed to nest into the same area as the folded soft-top (mission accomplished, nearly -- see below), it features an outer skin fashioned from sheet moulded composite (SMC). A material used for everything from truck dash panels to jetski hulls, SMC gives great structural rigidity and a ripple-free ready-to-paint surface. It's also stable and light -- the whole hardtop is only 18kg heavier than the cloth roof.

The Roadster Coupe's headlining is also moulded, this time a glass-fibre reinforced polypropylene. No worries about rot or sagging cloth in a year or five. Even the heated glass rear window is retained.

Just 20mm thick, the roof's profile retains the original soft-top's lines. Despite the need for Mazda to raise the front edge of the boot lid around 40mm (the roof doesn't quite fit in the same space as the soft-top) other styling tweaks such as pumping out the rear guards have retained the flavour of the original car's attractive lines.

Unlike the rest of the folding hardtop brigade, there's been no luggage space lost either. Just as well -- with just 150lt of boot space, the MX-5 is for frugal packers at best. Soft bags are a better bet than even small suitcases.

Golfers, says Mazda, can fit in a set of clubs though the drivers (clubs, not personnel) need to be removed and placed just so. Believe it or not there's a special notch in the boot liner!

Open top car launches are guaranteed drought breakers and the MX-5 Roadster Coupe was no different. Alas it meant we spent much of the time driving the Roadster Coupe with the roof firmly latched into position.

With no changes to the front of the car (windscreen, frame, etc, are shared across soft-top and Roadster Coupe models), the open air experience is unchanged. Though Mazda claims the hardtop attenuates some high frequency sounds and is quieter than the soft-top when raised, the Roadster Coupe is not coupe quiet. Nor is it as rattle free as you'd expect -- at least over the broken surfaces of the northern NSW and Gold Coast Hinterland roads we drove.

That said, condemning the car for this would be to miss the point of it -- the Roadster Coupe's about civilizing the open car experience, not completely sanitizing it.

Similar, is the addition of Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) as standard equipment to the Roadster Coupe and the rest of the MX-5 range. You can turn this combination traction and stability control off if you're keen to misbehave, but in the at-times slimey conditions of the launch it was a welcome safety net.

Priced at $47,660 for the manual version (the remarkably involving six-speed Activematic auto is $49,835), the Roadster Coupe comes as 'one with the lot'. Leather upholstery and a 200W seven-speaker premium BOSE audio system are standard as are the normal MX-5 features such as aircon, one-touch power windows, ABS brakes, and front and side airbags.

In addition, the Roadster Coupe gets extra brightwork over and above the similarly equipped and identically-powered 118kW top-of-the-range $44,730 MX-5 'Touring' soft-top. (To read our full technical run down and launch test of the MX-5 roadster click here

Keen MX-5 watchers will note the difference in price between Touring and new Roadster Coupe is $2390 -- $10 less than the fixed hardtop offered as an accessory on soft-tops. It's little wonder Mazda expects the Roadster Coupe to account for more than two-thirds of all MX-5 sales from here on in.

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