I've owned this car a long time, too long probably. I've been a part of this ATL community long enough that I should probably share my build thread.
I bought this car in October of 2000.
Some will be photos given to me from friends. I know I have them, but I don't know their location at the moment. I started looking for my Miata around April of '00. I was originally looking for a RWD coupe. I considered a 240sx, BMW 3 series, and a Subaru 2.5RS. I even looked at other classics, like a Datsun Fairlady for the 60’s. It was to be a second car; something I would put away in the winter months had recently relocated back to west Michigan. The Miata sort of popped into my head from a soon-to-be good friend met through a car club. He had a white '94 r-pack. I knew I wanted a LNC, mariner and I looked for months. Fortunately, one finally popped up in early October, owned by a young professional couple. He was a marketing executive, she was a surgeon, so I had a good feeling it was well cared for. It was sitting in the garage, collecting dust. He was about 6'8" and couldn't kit in the car. She couldn't take both boys with her in the Miata. It had 38,xxx miles on it, B-package with Mazdaspeed stripes. He had bought her a Porsche cabriolet "so the kids could fit in the back seat" as replacement. I nodded in agreement, but rolled my mind’s eye.

Unfortunately, my daily driver broke and I was going to have to drive the Miata through the winter. I was commuting about 50 miles a day, so I had to prep the car for winter.
This would later become something I would regret a few years later.
Fortunately, my daily had the same PCD as the Miata, so I took a set of wheels I had mounted r-comps on and mounted snow tires.
The long winter of '00-01:




The spring of '01, I got back into autocross with a local, non-marque car club. This was the first event of the year and I ran it top down in the rain:


The nice part about owning a Miata is I already had deep experience with Mazda b-series engine and platforms from racing a few Escort GTs ('91 and '94). That was also the spring I met a girl in a local Miata club. She had a customized '99 sport with ghost flames and wore Doc Martens. She would later become my wife.

The most vivid memory I have from this period, though, is on September 11, 2001. I was on a plane that day, flying to Milwaukee to catch my connection to NYC. I was preparing to be a part of a large presentation that afternoon in Manhattan, a few blocks from the trade center. I never made that connection. It was a blur of a day. The two coworkers I was with rented one of the last cars remaining and drove back around the south end of Lake Michigan, through Chicago, back to west Michigan. I remember watching the Chicago skyline as we drove through, expecting to see a plane fly into the
Sears Tower.
We eventually made the long drive back to work that afternoon. It was a nice, sunny, late summer day. I remember slipping into the Miata, dropping the top and spending the next two hours driving the lakeshore roads thinking about what had happened that day, how circumstances lead us to take an unusual flight over the normal direct flight we normally took to meet that client. It sounds corny, but the longer I drove with the top down and the sun covering me, putting mile after mile of scenic water front views behind me, the more the stress melted away. It was probably THE most connecting moment I've had with any car and probably what endured me most to this Miata from that point on.
I bought this car in October of 2000.
Some will be photos given to me from friends. I know I have them, but I don't know their location at the moment. I started looking for my Miata around April of '00. I was originally looking for a RWD coupe. I considered a 240sx, BMW 3 series, and a Subaru 2.5RS. I even looked at other classics, like a Datsun Fairlady for the 60’s. It was to be a second car; something I would put away in the winter months had recently relocated back to west Michigan. The Miata sort of popped into my head from a soon-to-be good friend met through a car club. He had a white '94 r-pack. I knew I wanted a LNC, mariner and I looked for months. Fortunately, one finally popped up in early October, owned by a young professional couple. He was a marketing executive, she was a surgeon, so I had a good feeling it was well cared for. It was sitting in the garage, collecting dust. He was about 6'8" and couldn't kit in the car. She couldn't take both boys with her in the Miata. It had 38,xxx miles on it, B-package with Mazdaspeed stripes. He had bought her a Porsche cabriolet "so the kids could fit in the back seat" as replacement. I nodded in agreement, but rolled my mind’s eye.

Unfortunately, my daily driver broke and I was going to have to drive the Miata through the winter. I was commuting about 50 miles a day, so I had to prep the car for winter.
This would later become something I would regret a few years later.
Fortunately, my daily had the same PCD as the Miata, so I took a set of wheels I had mounted r-comps on and mounted snow tires.
The long winter of '00-01:




The spring of '01, I got back into autocross with a local, non-marque car club. This was the first event of the year and I ran it top down in the rain:


The nice part about owning a Miata is I already had deep experience with Mazda b-series engine and platforms from racing a few Escort GTs ('91 and '94). That was also the spring I met a girl in a local Miata club. She had a customized '99 sport with ghost flames and wore Doc Martens. She would later become my wife.

The most vivid memory I have from this period, though, is on September 11, 2001. I was on a plane that day, flying to Milwaukee to catch my connection to NYC. I was preparing to be a part of a large presentation that afternoon in Manhattan, a few blocks from the trade center. I never made that connection. It was a blur of a day. The two coworkers I was with rented one of the last cars remaining and drove back around the south end of Lake Michigan, through Chicago, back to west Michigan. I remember watching the Chicago skyline as we drove through, expecting to see a plane fly into the
Sears Tower.
We eventually made the long drive back to work that afternoon. It was a nice, sunny, late summer day. I remember slipping into the Miata, dropping the top and spending the next two hours driving the lakeshore roads thinking about what had happened that day, how circumstances lead us to take an unusual flight over the normal direct flight we normally took to meet that client. It sounds corny, but the longer I drove with the top down and the sun covering me, putting mile after mile of scenic water front views behind me, the more the stress melted away. It was probably THE most connecting moment I've had with any car and probably what endured me most to this Miata from that point on.
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