I prefer the looks of the ND, but it'd be tough to pass on a turbo that is a tune away from 200 hp (from what I hear), and the snorty exhaust for less money than a club. Particularly since Road and Track is saying the Recaros will be an option on the Abarth.

 

With 170whp within reach on CA91 with just the OF header and tune, I'm pretty sure we'll hit 176 maybe 180whp once we have our intake done and a matching catback built. Frankly, that's enough. The car is fast with only 155whp and no top. Add the hardtop and another 20whp, I think it's money as a tracktoy.

 

OF header?

Do you plan to offer exhaust bits for the ND? Not asking for insider secrets, just asking to see if I should wait before ordering from GWR. I'm a few months away from ordering anything either way.

 

Maybe I'm the only one, but I wasn't terribly impressed with the 155 HP on my admittedly brief test drive. I bet it's plenty for track fun, and way better than a stock NA, but leaves a little to be desired for a modern $30k DD. If the Fiat can improve on that with no hardware changes, and also reportedly remove some body roll, it's worth a hard look.

 

FWIW, Emilio said 155 WHP, which is considerably more than what the car puts out off the lot.

But overall I agree with you. I think the little Fiat with its torquey engine that's easily tunable would really be a blast. Again, curious about weight difference and such.

 

You're not alone. That ridiculous silver windshield frame is gaudy as all get out. Eye of the beholder and all that jazz but it's got nothing on the ND.

Aside from the six different lamps on the front end, the awful wheel design, the horrible contrast between the matte gray and bright gloss red, the silly windshield frame that matches nothing else on the car and the absurdly oversized Fiat logos front and rear I would completely agree with you.

 

Serious question:

As you well know, I'm much more of an electronics-and-engine guy then a suspension guy, but this seems totally counter-intuitive. How does decreasing available suspension travel while retaining the stock spring rate lead to a cushy ride? In my own experience, and presumably that of most of us who learned suspension tuning on the NA / NB platform, this is a recipe for failure. For cars which are largely bumpstop-limited (eg: all lightweight compacts), ride comfort on the street, especially when lowered, tends to be enhanced by doubling or tripling the stock spring rate and installing dampers to match.

(For that matter, what are the stock spring rates and spring ratios on the ND?)








And yeah, that picture is pretty hideous. Lose the ricer black hood thing and make it all red, including the windshield frame.

A part of me wonders if Mazda's agreement with Fiat stipulates that they aren't allowed to make the car look less ugly overall than the ND, no matter how sexy the curves. "You want to give it a more svelte nose? Well, you're gonna have to slap *****-makeup on it to compensate."

 

I think what he meant was: mild drop WHILE maintaining same comfort

 

Yeah, I got that.

What I meant was that, in my admittedly limited experience, lowering the car while retaining stock springrates = you're gonna be pounding the bumpstops like Hustler at a Nickleback concert.

 

Unlike the NA, the ND has copious reserves of bump travel. Gain low speed compression and rebound damping with a better quality shock and I think someone could definitely lower the car on the stock springs effectively.

 

I was at the Dave's Garage meet today and heard some unsettling rumours about transmission failures in ND's. This is transmissions delivered in September destroying second or third gear by February. Anyone know whether this is true?

 

How much suspension travel does it have before a reasonably sized street tire runs afoul of the fender, fender liner, etc?

 

Depends on your definition of reasonable sized tire

 

Having not done much research into available 17" tires, I'm aware that I'm posing the question to a guy who manufactures wheels which stretch the credulity of the term "reasonable."

 

There is a lot of discussion about this on miata.net. It sounds like a metallurgical issue affecting some transmissions and mazda is aware of and fixing the issue. If your box breaks, I would expect it to be easy to get mazda to replace it.

 

Time to hit the drag strip

 

Been wondering this for a while. Is the NA/NB miata very sensitive to unsprung weight? More so than other cars? Why does the ND run a 17" wheel instead of a 15" wheel?

 

More than the NA/NB. You can assume that if I make a assertion like that I'm assuming Apples to Apples. In other words tires that make the car handle well and actually fit.

The limitations on the early car don't have much to do with the tire and the fender. They have more to do with where the upper shock mount is located
It is a short shock. So you have to try to figure out a way to get a lot of stroke with a little tiny short shock. The NDon the other hand, has a much higher upper mounting point and uses a rear shock that's something like 30% longer. So it's much easier to get longer stroke out of it.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the ND runs a 17 because of current fashion trends. Larger wheel wells = larger wheels.

 

because stance is life bruhhh