This MX-5 is soooo much better than I expected!!

I had another blast in the MX-5, this time using the flappy paddle manual-style gear changers. Weeellll, previously I said that a manual mode was probably superfluous, but I was so wrong! I was expecting a sort of hatch-back style ride and a fairly mild power delivery, but no such thing. This baby FLIES!! Being rear-wheel drive, there's none of this pathetic scrabbling for traction coming out of a corner; it just gathers up it's bustles and shoves off down the road. It's like nailing a motorbike out of a corner, and having the front end go light: the drive continues, but the front is doing all the steering, and it can feel a bit light over the bumps. All a learning curve. When just accelerating hard up a straight road, if you hit the red line/lmiter, it just changes up for you, which was confusing at first, as I found my self flicking the up-shift just as it did it for me, resulting in changing up two gears at once. I guess you either short-shift, or let it get on with it, and take over again once you've finished accelerating. Bit of an odd one, though. Overtakes are effortless in a very short stretch of road, and it really really gives me back a lot of the stuff I loved about motorbikes. I'm getting sun/wind burned!! I really, really love this car.

The ride is firm, but when you get going, it makes sense, flowing over undulations and flying over potholes and drain covers. There is tremendous grip everywhere, but I'm still taking it easy out of corners and tight bends, as there is 160 ps of power going through those back tyres, and I don't want to spin in. There is traction control, but I haven't been driving hard enough to need it.

The seats are plush compared to Denise's old Elise, but they are still pretty firm, so they're nice and supportive. It's got all the toys: air-con, heated leather seats, and blue-tooth connectivity for the phone. You can set up a phone-book in the car (independent of the phone you're using) so you can call people by name. The voice-recognition is very good, and hasn't made a mistake yet. I've paired my phone with the car, and set up some numbers in the phone book, but I haven't used it yet. I usually switch my phone off when I'm in the car, but if we're going down to Yorkshire in two cars later this month, it might be useful to have it available should I need it. Also, I'll be able to let family know our progress. I don't like using the phone on the move, so I'll need to see how it goes. I did need to use my phone in the car the other day when I was trying to organise my insurance for the MX-5, so I had to stop in a bus-stop or use the speakerphone, neither of which is very satisfactory.

So, yeah, I'm really pleased I went for the MX-5 in the end. I think we're going to be friends for a very long time. I am SUCH a fuckin' petrol head ...