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I like the front of the ND better, and the rear of the 124 better.
The bottom line for me, is the Fiat has all the fun Miata bits, plus the goodies that I would want in a miata, from the factory.
Put it all together with maxcare, and it's what will get my money.
I'm not bashing the ND whatsoever. I love it in fact.
Now if only Mazda came out with some FI version of the ND...
Now let's get back to drooling over some orange ND and rollbar pics.
Road & Track has an article in September issue about the 124. They didn't like it.
Originally Posted by Road & Track
All told, this is a great car made into a good one. If the Miata didn't exist and the 124 did, the staff of this magazine would be doing cartwheels. And that's the rube: The Miata does exist, and the Fiat mostly serves to remind you how good that car is. Perhaps this makes you ask yourself what kind of jerk moans about another rear-drive roadster on the market. But when you shave off the focused edges of a special, thoroughly considered car, you end up with something less than special.
The 124 is a sad attempt to recreate some of the pain, er magic of the original 124.
Fiat has wisely taken a design cue from the American automakers, and created a look which modernizes the lines of the classic autos that people my age had hanging on our bedroom walls in poster-form when we were kids. American automakers who learned from the failure of cars like the HHB and the Prowler which were essentially caricatures of themselves, and created things like the current-gen Charger, Camaro and Mustang.
Originally Posted by emilio700
The tightly drawn features, as you describe are what attract people to the ND. The design creates an fascinating balance between muscular tension like a E type Jag or Ferrari 458 and a flow that has a grace and overall coherence form every angle.
The design has no coherence whatsoever.
The effortless, unpretentious grace of the NA is the embodiment of the Miata. It's a timeless shape that looks good without even trying, and was an entirely original (and still unparalleled) creation. The ND, as you've noted, looks like it's trying to be three different cars all at once, and failing at each.
Joe is just mad that the ND doesn't look like the gay hairdresser car that the NA looks like and actually looks like something a straight male might drive
I don't really think the current gen Camaro looks the original classic, but I know next to nothing about the old school muscle cars. I love my current gen rusting design/looks
Joe is just mad that the ND doesn't look like the gay hairdresser car that the NA looks like and actually looks like something a straight male might drive
Pretty much.
From the front, the ND looks like a Toyabaru that's squinting its eyes in direct sunlight:
I'm not calling it ugly, just pointing out that while the NA/NB styling was extremely innovative, the ND is extremely derivative, to the point where you could probably cut the roof off of a BRZ and use it as a hard-top for an ND.
The back-end, meanwhile, looks more like a kit-car than anything ever to come out of Milan, which even if they'd have succeeded would still be like serving sushi with a side of meatballs.
Meh, by that logic you can write off every modern car that's not totally wacky/ugly nowadays.
While both have similar "mouth shape" the headlights are nowhere near the same
and if anything, I'm totally okay with cars that look like the toyobaru cause I think it looks Purdy good too. the burzz, not the furzz. the furzz front bumper is just not doing it for me
look at how many cars nowadays have that evo/gtr pignose. you can say they all look the same too
Meh, by that logic you can write off every modern car that's not totally wacky/ugly nowadays.
While both have similar "mouth shape" the headlights are nowhere near the same
and if anything, I'm totally okay with cars that look like the toyobaru cause I think it looks Purdy good too. the burzz, not the furzz. the furzz front bumper is just not doing it for me
Again, I'm not writing it off, I'm not calling it ugly, and I'm not arguing with you.
I was responding to emilio, who opined that:
ND has many new shpaes not seen on any car that I know of.
(...)
The design creates an fascinating balance between muscular tension like a E type Jag or Ferrari 458 and a flow that has a grace and overall coherence form every angle.
There's not much unique going on. As you said, the front end is borrowed from every other "sporty" Jap car trying to appeal to the bro-crowd, and the back end looks more like the Italia bodykit than something which has "grace and coherence" with the angry-white-boy frontside.
Would I still buy one? Heck yeah, after they come way down in price in the used market.
Same. Roger Beasley on Burnet has a Ceramic club chilling out in the secondary lot, it takes everything in me not to go make an impulse buy and get to hooning.
The NA Miata was the fat Japanese cousin of the Lotus Elan. Saying it looked like nothing else neglects the fact it was an homage to the Lotus that directly copied some of the design cues. It doesn't make it bad any more than it makes the new car bad to have incorporated cues of others. What makes the 124 bad from certain angles is the poor incorporation or modernization of those cues.
It's getting harder and harder to innovate design as time goes on.
There's also a HUGE propensity for people to say "It looks just like _____."
it's like... take a headlight, for example. THEY'RE BOTH projector-beam headlights mounted in the limited real-estate of the front of a sporty car. There's only so much you can do with that.... Unless you're Nissan, and try this:
WHAT? A 2-door sporty coupe looks just like another 2-door sporty coupe, except for all the other little details? No ****, Sherlock.
EVERYTHING is derivative. Including the NA Miata, as Sixshooter pointed out above.
For those who don't pay attention to the details, everything new will always look like something that came before it.
Edit to add: This post, in general, is not directed particularly at one Joe Perez. I'm simply using his examples. But seriously Joe. The ND is pretty damned innovative in terms of design and engineering for its class.
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