The Mazda MX-5 and the Importance of Driving

It’s a twist of fate: having one of the most driver-focused cars you can put in a garage - the Mazda MX-5 - at the exact moment when staying at home is compulsory.

Confinement, temptation, and handing back the Mazda MX-5

I’ll admit that, to avoid putting myself in a position where temptation might win, I brought the return forward. I dropped it off before the weekend began, just in case the urge to get behind the wheel spoke louder - at a time when other priorities have to come first.

And it was on the way to yet another handover - and returning a Mazda MX-5 is always a less cheerful moment than collecting one - that I started thinking more seriously about the weight of what’s happening.

The importance of driving

Someone once said that “life is too short to drive boring cars”. The name behind the line has faded, but the line itself hasn’t.

And it rings true. Life really is too short for dull cars - especially now, when the opportunities to drive at all feel increasingly limited. In fact, it’s almost a year since these restrictions on our freedom of movement first began.

A freedom I always assumed I had

I’m 35, and throughout my adult life I’ve taken it for granted that, whenever I felt like driving, I could. Grab the car keys, leave the house, and go wherever I fancied. Or even head out without any destination in mind. It doesn’t matter.

That’s the kind of freedom a car can give you: complete freedom.

The secret of the Mazda MX-5

The Mazda MX-5 first arrived in 1989. Since then, more than two decades have passed, the world has changed - a lot - and yet the recipe of this small Japanese roadster still feels as relevant as ever.

The Mazda MX-5 remains a bulwark of freedom and the joy of driving.

Here’s one reason why: simplicity. In a world that keeps getting more complicated and tangled, Mazda continues to back an uncomplicated car. Two seats, a manual roof, a manual gearbox, a naturally aspirated engine, rear-wheel drive, plus a handful of things we no longer want to be without (air conditioning, central locking, an infotainment system, and so on).

That simplicity is rooted in a key part of the MX-5’s success: you don’t need a driving course to understand it. All it takes is a little patience and a bit of nerve - or not even that. Even at a gentle pace, with the roof down, you can still enjoy the freedom of driving under an open sky.

Put another way, the Mazda MX-5 distils what the car represents: freedom. And, thankfully, the Mazda MX-5 isn’t the industry’s only example. The car world has, for years, managed to withstand - with stoic resilience - all the attacks aimed at it.

To attack the car is to attack our freedom. But we can take comfort in this: as long as brands like Mazda keep championing the importance of driving with special models like this Mazda MX-5 - which marks 100 years of the Japanese marque - we can be confident there will still be space on our roads, in the future, for the pleasure of driving and travelling.

When this is over, we’ll go for a drive. Deal?

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