Driving a fifty-year-old convertible is great fun; Not so, at least for me, maintaining one. As reported in its own My Wheels chapter, the 1963 Valiant was sold not long after it completed its mission of carrying me over the full length of the Lincoln Highway. I’d already put some thought into what its replacement would be and did some looking as I waited for the Valiant to sell. I wanted something open and fun to drive like my most recent “play” cars but without the repair frequency of the Valiant or the repair expense of the Corvettes. A Mazda Miata seemed to fit my desires quite nicely.

By pure — and extremely lucky — coincidence, a friend and fellow Lincoln Highway fan was downsizing the family fleet and looking to sell his own “play” car. I met Mike and Nancy Hocker at the next Ohio Lincoln Highway gathering, test drove their 2003 Miata, and, after a couple of phone calls and a little negotiation, bought the car a few weeks later. Two owners had preceded the Hockers and apparently all three had used the car for short sunny summer day outings. At eleven years of age, its odometer registered just 37.500 miles; Barely 3,400 a year, 12,500 per owner. I would change that.

I bought the car in early May. The photo at the top of this article was taken on May 21 in the middle of its first trip. It was a three-day outing along the Wonderland Way across Indiana and into Illinois. The picture at left is from its second, somewhat more ambitious trip, a month later. The destination was a Route 66 festival in Kingman, AZ, which would have been a reasonably long drive by itself but I chose to enhance it a bit. I entered Kingman from the west after driving the full length of the Old Spanish Trail from Saint Augustine, FL, to San Diego, CA. The picture was taken near Milton, FL. That trip totaled nearly 7,000 miles which put the car’s miles-since-purchase at about 10,000. I was obviously screwing up its yearly average and the mile-per-owner average didn’t look very safe either. 

To date, the Miata has taken me on nine documented road trips. I still own it and the count will almost certainly increase. Both photos at right are from a 2015 trip to Maine. The first is outside my motel room in Littleton, NH. The second is outside my motel room in Ellsworth, ME. When I bought the car, it was wearing 18-inch wheels with 35 series tires. When it came time to replace the tires, I did the wheels too so they are now 16-inch with 45 series tires.

In the previous My Wheels chapter, I mentioned that I got estimates on repairs to its subject car from a body shop I had experience with. That experience was with this car. I had actually intended to take the Miata on the trip where the Forester got roughed up but it was still in the shop from its own encounter. I was about half a mile from home waiting on a light in the left turn lane. I was the third or fourth car in the line and the non-turn lane to the right was empty. The driver of the Jeep Grand Cherokee immediately in front of me decided that going straight was a better idea than turning left and moved to change lanes. I hit the horn as soon as I saw the backup lights come on so the impact was a slow one but a tow hook on the Jeep still poked a fair-sized hole in the Miata. The Jeep owner accepted responsibility without question and the shop did a nice job on repairs, but that little incident is why it was the Subaru that I took to get slapped around in Virginia.    

I’ve now owned the car for five years or nearly a third of its life. Its mileage has more than doubled to just over 80,000. Problems have been rare and costs have been reasonable. It handles like a go-kart and the 5-speed manual seems just right. The 142 HP is enough. I liken it to an Austin Healey that doesn’t leak oil and actually starts when it’s raining. It is a near perfect play car for an old man who knows that it’s a lot more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 37 — 2011 Subaru Forester
My Next Wheels: Chapter 39 — 2018 Subaru Forester