How did you get into cars? And why you like Miata?
 

I got into cars when my parents bought me a Play Station when I was like 10. I got Gran Turismo 2 because it was the same price as the rest of the games and came with two disks.

I bought a Miata because I wanted a sports car, but I didn't have enough for a nice V8 mustang or F-body. I almost bought an nicely done Integra, but decided I must have RWD, and after I learned I could get a rollbar to make it look less gay my mind was made up.

My uncle had a miata, still has it, now ubercharged. I always thought it was cool. I started really liking cars after I learned to drive stick.

Bought a non turbo DSM to replace my shitbox CRX HF (love the gas mileage, hated the car fires from the PO's shitty attempts at electrical repair :/). The previous owner of the DSM had replaced the timing belt but didn't time the car correctly, so about 50 miles in to my ownership, I melted holes through 3 of the valves (i still have one kicking around somewhere....).

My dad gave me a choice, drain my bank account to pay for the repair, or he would buy me a full tool set for christmas and a haynes manual and I could fix it myself. Being a cheap ass, I opted for the latter :D. Been hooked ever since.

I love the miata because of the simplicity of the thing. I've never worked on a car that was so intuitive and accessible. TBH, in my entire miata ownership, I never owned a haynes manual at all and was able to keep the car maintained just because it was so damn simple.
edit: ----. shitbox. fuckbox....... lol @ poor regular expression matches ;P

dad drove race cars before I was born. then just was a car nut after deciding to have kids.

i grew up riding shotgun in a street-restored porsche 356. other car, oddly, was a ford LTD country squire with fake wood paneling. go figure.

I couldn't help myself. No real influences -- just part of the DNA.

I also like aircraft, ships, trains, the Hoover dam, anything mechanical. I like electronics too, but they're still pretty mysterious compared to good ol' metal and oil.

People, OTOH . . . .

...should mostly be exterminated.

My older bros, 13 and 15 years older than I. Always an old Ford truck, some Mustang or another, 66 Fairlaine, 72 "cuda.. always in the yard.

Mom started up and ran a air coold VW bug shop for a few years. Some of my earliest memories wer pulling apart VW engines with hand tools.This was about the time "Pong" video game first came out on the market.

The first time I skipped school I spent it in my Bros 66 Stang that was on jack stands.

When I was older, in my teens, I moved my bedroom into the grarage. I had it set up so when I drove my old beat to hell 81 stang in there, I could open my drivers door and fall into my bed.

I still do not own a Miata, But I have been noticing more of them in my travels.

I got into cars when I was a teen as I started hanging around a lot of people that had late 60's early 70's muscle. That was also at the time when fox body mustangs just got stupidly cheap and 3rd gen F body trans am's and camaro's were fading out as the LS-1 4th gen cars were arriving at the car dealerships. I had a 1971 Pontiac Lemans, and a 1971 Chevy Nova, then I sold those heavy rust buckets off and bought a few 3rd gen F body Trans Am's. I built a .030 over 350 for my 1988 Trans Am GTA, and then "The Fast and the Furious" came out and a very small fraction of my friends (who most of my V8 friends frowned upon) got into wrong wheel driven imports. Nobody had anything impressive, except my one friend who bought a 1996 Acura Integra. He bought a Jackson racing supercharger for it and one night me and him bolted it on and took his car out for a beating. It was a night and day difference from the stock 1.8, but he eventually blew the motor. Then he had a motor built and put some turbo kit on it. He ran 12 something with BFG drag radials, which earned him respect, but people (including me) never got over the point of doing that to a front wheel drive car.
After realizing how much money I dumped into a 3500 lb car with 4 seats and a loud 8 cylinder that gets 16mpg...I decided that I needed something smaller, lighter, better on fuel mileage...something with major potential. The only car that made sense to me was a miata. I like the toyota MR-2, but I wanted a full convertable, and I didn't want a rear engine car.
Funny enough, my miata reminds me a lot of my Trans Am underneath. It's RWD, but the Miata has an independent rear, but they both use a torq arm.
If I still had my GTA, and I lined up to my Miata...My Miata would destroy that Trans Am.
I still hang out with my old friends who influenced me towards cars, and they still drive their old muscle. When they see what my car runs now, to what it ran when I bought it, they respect it.

I grew up around my dad who was always tinkering on his motorcycle, or the cars we had, Jeeps, Rangers, etc. my best friends brother had a mustang or lightning ( we counted atleast 3 of each within 6 years). in 2002 my dad decided he wanted to build something so he got a kit cobra. when he totaled his first car he pulled the motor and crated it up, 68 Mercury Cougar XR7 with a swapped 427. i helped him build it at age 9 and haven't turned back since.
I got a miata because a friend in high school had one and he let me drive it around the parking lot a few times when i was like 14, i love the simplicity and looks of them, and gas millage helped as well. bought the car turbo'd and have been redoing the PO's work ever since, but i enjoy it and have almost fixed everything they did.

I was born with a sawzall in one hand and a BFH in the other. Destiny.

Daddy was into drag racing for years and years, opened one of the first "hot rod shops" in Dallas called Hot Rod Exchange where he sold parts and built drag race cars. I always kind of enjoyed it but thought the racing was boring. Then I saw the 1990 24 Hours of leMans on ESPN really early in the morning (all purple Jaguar) and then realized there was a better way. I took a dramatic departure from drag racing and quit going. Finally, 15-years later, I got to take dad for a ride on a proper track.

I bought the Miata for a few reasons. I had just spent an insane amount of money on my Jetta which had me in a nasty financial position due to unreliability and it was dirt dirt dirt cheap. My now brother in law had a supercharged 1994 and it seemed to be pretty fast and reliable. Finally, I wanted something RWD again.

Because racecar.

/thread.

My dad has always been a car nut. Growing up, his basket-case E-Type Jag was a fixture in the garage. Mom had a '65 Mustang convertible as her daily for a while, and dad had a '76 Eldorado convertible - they've still got both cars, and the Jag is STILL unfinished, in storage.

I had Hot Wheels as far back as I can remember, then graduated to slot cars and RC cars - I've still got the wicked-ass '80-81 LaTrax Vette that was my first, along with all the other ones that I've packratted over the years. Somewhere along the way, I found dad's stash of old Road & Track mags - every issue back to 1965. I spent hours on end going through them front to back. When I was in third grade, my older cousin came to visit with her first new car - a 1983 RX-7. I deemed it the coolest car ever and vowed one day to own one. My first car was a piece of crap '78 Camaro that looked slick but ran like dog poop. I ended up selling that before I turned 16 and my folks chipped in the difference for a used Mustang LX 5.0 that was a retired Budget rent car from Oklahoma. The handwritten note inside the owner's manual said "Bald Tires." Some years later, my first "second" car was a 1981 RX-7 that I picked up for $600 with proceeds from scalping Pink Floyd tickets. I would end up with three more FB RX-7s (including a ragged out GSL-SE) and one FC (a ratty '86 GXL). My dad ended up with a '93 FD for a while as well - delicate, but so awesome to drive.

I almost pulled the trigger on a Miata in college, but I ended up restoring an old BMW and daily driving that thing for almost 10 years. I always had an RX-7 as my backup, and it never failed to crank and run. When the BMW bit it, I had already turned the RX into a project car, so I decided to go find a Miata. I've had the thing for over 5 years and beat the hell out of it, but it looks and runs and drives better than it did the day I drove it home.

So there you go... I still have my last FB RX. It's an unfinished V8 conversion, but I'm ready to quit on it and stuff the drivetrain into a half-decent Fox body. I need a bigger garage, more money, and more time to screw with this stuff.

Dad raced Porsches when I was a toddler. I was always taking apart toys when I was little, and eventually became good enough to put them back together. I changed my first spark plugs when I was ~7, in an '80s F150. I sat in the engine bay to do the work.

My first car was a '90 POS non-turbo eclipse which had been raped by the PO. I wish I had more of a choice in cars. I self-taught myself using the internet to get it back into respectable conditon, and have continued my use of the internet to gain knowledge about cars ever since then.

I got into cars because of the MSM. I was am a geek and never gave two shits about cars until I got one worth caring about. First car was an 89 Olds Calais and after warping the head twice was replaced with a 00 Focus ZX3. The Focus was a fun little car and my first manual, although I learned on Dad's F150. Paid it off early and was reading about Miatas on a non-car forum for a while, they sounded fun and cheap. Then found out you could buy one with a turbo and warranty (which was useless...). I was gone for hour and a half with a very nervous salesman pacing his office. He offered me a deal at 1500 off. Came back couple days later after talking to the internet salesman and walked out with it for 19.5k

Bought it in Feb 05, sold the Focus to my brother for retarded cheap and planned to drive it daily. Did so until Oct and 15k miles later. Bought a beater 95 Olds Century to daily and haven't looked back. The wagon is gone, replaced with a Subie, and the MSM is slowly becoming a track car. There's something about these cars, thought about selling twice but couldn't find anything to replace it with. I dream of an OBD-2 simulator and big turbos.

I thought it was a good way to spot other like-minded individuals for casual encounters.

Raced 1/4 midgets, bikes,and R/C Cars. When I was 14-15, dad told me one day a real car will get me some tail. He lied. I bought a 91 tsi awd right before my 16th and doing awd launches and donuts had me hooked. Did so many donuts one time that the tail at the time was crying she was going to get sick. What was 6 inches of show and a layer of ice had turned into a circle of tire rubber. It skipped a few teeth on the timing belt and ate a few valves the following winter. This was beyond my capabilities to fix, along with the guy who said he knew what he was doing. It was also over the heads of the new high performance shop that opened in town who tried setting timing twice, then handed me the car with incorrect valve timing and a 5k bill. I told them that wasn't going to fly. At 1000 they were supposed to call... Which they didn't do. We settled at 2k and I sold the car to someone who was going to part it out for 5500. This helped pay for the ws6 grandma helped me buy (she drove it till I put the spec stage 4 clutch in it) and I've been LS1 since then. Got tired of dealing with heim joints and the Detroit locker, plus the surge from the 242/248 cam and parted that car out in 2007 or so. Had the vette for a year, and it died in a house fire. After being beat a few times by a little NA NA at our schools tiny autocross course, I looked around to see if I could get an ls1 in it. At the time, only one game was in town but I knew it'd fit. Test drove an NB that lacked boost and was bored. It seemed to scare the car dealer but I just couldn't deal with how slow it was. Looked at m.nets classified section and found an FMII equipped smurf for sale. Test drove it and decided I could deal with how boring it was while stock piling parts. Parts are now in the car and here we are.

Because initial d.

My brother got me into cars.

Then my buddy talked me into a miata. Small, RWD, cheap.