I am, and I’ve been driving various flavors of Miata since 1997-ish.  

The radios were often replaced under warranty and the 4-digit unlock code written in sharpie on the chassis when you pop it out of the dash.

There were special Lada Canada brochures, I had some from the Vancouver car show a million years ago but I’m sure they’re long gone.  Outlined the various models and trim differences, plus dealer accessories!  

There are frame-rail-shaped extrusions as part of the unibody.  Just like almost every other unibody, FWIW.  

Absolutely love this story. Am Canadian, grew up with a gearhead buddy who collected these, we would take them out into the wilderness for weekend trips but also use them as urban runabouts in Vancouver.

If the head gaskets failed it’s a meaningful amount of work to repair, but otherwise parts and service on a Disco are pretty cheap and cheerful. Lots of interchange options. After I did a deal to sell my last one, but before the new owner picked it up, the power steering pump’s internal seal failed. It was easily…

I owned the non-M version (didn’t fit in the ///M seats properly). Z4 3.0si Coupe was probably the best-looking car I’ve ever had. Also the only car of mine in which I was flagged down by someone so they could ask me about it.  Drove great, quite useful with the rear hatch. It’s on the ‘shouldn’t have sold it’ list.

But did you know there was an M30 Convertible while you were there?

I had an ‘01, black on black, bought new. I was well aware of the Pathfinder alternative but preferred the Infiniti dealer by a country mile. I roamed around the western US with it, it was quiet, comfortable, towed an open trailer with my Miata without particular difficulty, and nobody ever complained about the back…

Remember kids, mechanical engineers build weapons.  Civil engineers build targets.  

Not one, but two different opportunities to buy a NSX at pre-nutty prices.

VWs in general seem to do well in the medium. Though the MOCs I’ve seen of VW Things are not great.

Ew.  

I wondered the same thing but chose not to ask...

Being told, within 100 yards of driving off the lot and apropos of nothing, about how the salesman’s son and a buddy had “tag-teamed” a girl who came to watch one of their hockey games. And being told in the crudest terms imaginable.

How is the BMW i3 not on this list?

The M5 is a marvel because it does things that fall so far outside our normal expectations for “sedan”. I suggest you withhold final judgment until you take one around a track or otherwise drive it in anger in a safe place, it’s dizzying just what these cars can accomplish despite being heavy, comfortable, and big.

To clarify, these came with a 6-speed in manual guise. I have a 2013 Frontier 6-speed and am consistently amused while accelerating when the V6 comes on cam. The gearbox is pretty nice and crisp as trucks go, it responds well to heel-toe downshifts, and it’ll happily run on regular fuel.

In my senior year in college I bought a perfect, bone stock, teal 1990 CRX Si. I think I paid $3500 for it, it had ~100k miles on it but literally the only thing wrong with it was sagging rear hatch struts. It did not, however, have the factory AC, and I didn’t know enough about wrenching to retrofit it myself.

NP. Also don’t forget that McLaren do build their own gearbox and are the supplier of record for the sealed electronic control units via McLaren Applied Technologies.