The FD was pretty well known in the 90s for ruining people’s days on a whim. I think most of it came down to the power delivery. You go into a turn off-boost with no power, floor the throttle, spool the two super slow turbos, and now you’re almost through the turn and you’ve got several times more power than when you…

Or the Miata.. whose platform this car would probably be built on.

If it’s like every other Miata, there is a gas tank there. Also, the NC had cubbies behind the seats, and they did not lead to the trunk.

There are actually federal regulations (49 CFR 571.108) covering these “headlight modulators” for motorcycles:

Pro tip: in Illinois, they can’t ticket you for using your phone while stopped if you have it in neutral (or park).

Interceptor vest in Operation Just Cause? Hah. That body armor wasn’t fielded until 10 years later.

Yes, once you get out of the city/suburbs, interstates are 70 and even some rural highways are 65. Thanks, Chicago.

The McLaren story is cool and all, but keep in mind a) while power was dropped a tiny bit, weight was also dropped, and the car was faster than an unmodified car, and b) several prototype cars failed, leaving the F1 open for the overall win—the slowest overall win in decades.

The Miata *is* (as in, present tense, right now) a terrible seller. Chalk that up to the NC being a bit long in the tooth, and chalk up the slump in the intervening years to the whole economic collapse thing. Realistically, it’s probably attributable to changes in the market and changes in how many people have money…

In the end, it’s not about oneness between horse and rider. Its about separating the rider from their cash to pay for the horse. The demographics of new Miata purchasers are heavily skewed towards people of retirement age, so getting midlife crisis folks onboard is actually a step towards a younger average customer.

It is, except when dealing with ATC.

Yes, which directly relates somewhat arbitrarily to 0-60 time. Some sources have said the ND will knock a second off the NC’s 0-60, which is highly unlikely, though if the redline is high enough to reach 60 in 2nd, that’s worth a few tenths on its own.

Just get it on tape hitting the rev limiter. It will settle a lot of arguments and speculation on miata.net. We just need the audio, really.

Interesting. Having been in the Marines during the time period when we were finishing the transition from cold war-era, purpose-built communications equipment to off the shelf commercial stuff, I’ve always been concerned about our vulnerability to EMPs. The older stuff had a pretty big emphasis on EMP shielding since…

FYI, the NC3 also had the pyrotechnic hood in some markets (like Japan), but we still don’t get that in the US.

Just imagine, during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, we had entire bases with tens of thousands of people on them, each powered by hundreds of generators idling away on JP-8 that was either trucked or flown in at insane costs. Though, on some of the larger bases, power did get more centralized as the wars progressed and we…

Yeah, provided you’re under 26 over.

Your insurance company won’t find out about it.

That’s basically how it was in Illinois up to a few years ago. Most of the time, you could still get court supervision and the record would be sealed. I think the main thrust of the excessive speeding law is to eliminate the possibility of court supervision, not to actually put people in jail.

Ah, yeah, good catch.