More on the new spider....

[Kevin1]

If it is to be released as a 2016 the design and development is most likely completed by now. Whatever the final design turns out to look like (those photoshop guesses are just that - guesses) we can be sure it will include airbags, electric power steering, abs, a/c, power brakes, a navigation option, maybe paddle shifters, 6 or more rear ratios, plus myriad other other modern safety/compliance stuff required by Uncle Sam to be sold here. Which means the new spider will be heavier than our old spiders, for sure. Along with having more power, faster acceleration, better handling, no "monkey arms" ergonomics, and less luggage space. I, for one, am very happy about the possibility of having another choice in an all too small market for affordable roadsters in the US.

The answer to the "chick car" stigma is simple. Drive an Miata, hard, on a winding road and report back after you manage to wipe the grin off your face. Mazda knows how to build and tune a great chassis/suspension combination. Think RX7, RX8, and MX5, all great driver's cars. Most new cars share platforms. Having the MX5 platform underpinning the new spider is a good thing. Give it a 160hp turbo, 6 speeds, with even halfway decent looks it will be a unique car for American roads.

One thing is certain, it will not be much like our '85 and older cars. Then again, what cars sold today are anything like an '85 or older model of the same make? My guess (there we go again!) this car priced comparable to or slightly above the Miata and billed as a more 'premium' product by Fiat. Time will tell, but as soon as one hits Fiat of Portland I plan taking an afternoon to go check it out.

[bradartigue]

What is FCA?

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

Sounds like a car with problems.

On the point about cars from the 80's...there was nothing like the Spider in the 80s, it was almost pure 1960's looking back at you. The Alfa spider was similar, though you could argue it had matured some.

[SunnySideUp]

...it was almost pure 1960's looking back at you. ...

Very important point! The "new" Mustang, Camaro, and even the Challenger (although it's an early '70s retro) ALL have carried forward the design cues from their '60s relatives that still turn heads even with the younger market. I have 20 and 30-somethings say "cool car" most of the time when they see my '82 Spider. There's even those with insecure gender identities that call it a "chick car" that are in those age ranges. But - it's important to note that the new version of the Camaros, Mustangs, etc. have completely new underpinnings and interiors - and are noticeably larger than their predecessors. But they all have visual triggers that relates to the cars that everyone remembers as "cool."

I don't mind the new Spider, 124, "whatever," having Mazda's proven platform and building off of that success. In fact, I welcome it. What I personally object to is the VISUAL aspect of it looking like a Miata/MX5 in any manner. It is just a body. There is absolutely no reason that the professional design houses can't make the body reminiscent of the classic - although updated - 124 Spider. Key design cues that are important to me personally are:

• The "Rondine" tail
  The recess behind the door handle on the '67-'78 series
  The design line arc from the front headlight over the front fender to the door handle and the gentle "bump" of that line up to the crest of the rear fender and down to the tail (you know what I mean - it's that classic "Italian" profile line)
  The recess of the headlight into the front fender
  The front grille opening and shape

Being human we are typically attracted to things visually before we are attracted to them functionally. Give me that perfected MX5 platform but encase it in an updated 124 Spider shell that has those classic Italian design cues even if the car is "bigger" because of the safety mandates. Tom Tjaarda doesn't have to be the one to design it - he has already done his job. It is up to a younger, yet competent, designer to pick it up and run with it.

If I were fortunate enough to have one of these "new" Spiders it would really turn my stomach if someone came up to me and asked what year my Miata was. I want something VERY distinct and would rather not have the Cadillac Cimmaron-Chevy Cavalier-Pontiac Sunbird (aka J-car) type of identity crisis to deal with.

Now, that being said - it would also be cool if someone would "re-imagine" the 124 Spider in similar fashion that has brought us the Eagle Speedster (Jaguar E-type) or the Singer 911 Porsche. Faithful, yet wicked. I'm not talking just fancy paint or upgraded materials on the interior like a certain outfit in Rolling Meadows, IL does. I'm thinking something along the lines of Andy's Spiders with a touch of Foose styling coupled with performance from Allison's Automotive and/or Midwest Bayless. But then we'd be at the price point of one of the proposed "new" 124 Spiders (or higher!).

I am hoping for some faithful coachwork reminiscent of the beloved 124 Spider on a great platform. C'mon FIAT - you can do this!

[focodave]

"I have 20 and 30-somethings say "cool car" most of the time when they see my '82 Spider. There's even those with insecure gender identities that call it a "chick car" that are in those age ranges."

Whether we all want to admit it or not, our beloved Spiders were often thought of as "chick cars" back in the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vEX8sGwSnU
It's one of many reasons I never bought one way back when. My American muscle-car buddies would have taken me out in the woods and beaten the life out of me if I had showed up on cruise night in a Fiat Spider back in 1980. Instead I drove a heavily modified '65 Barracuda and did not get the life beaten out of me for it.

[dougpaulburdick1200]

urrr, one of the nice things about owning a fiat spider is that I'm not subjected to the kinds of jokes that guys driving Miatas have to put up with.

[DieselSpider]

I have a number of friends and co-workers with Miata's wishing they had a Spider however I don't find myself wishing I had a Miata.

Some at work who have had it with Mazda's service department are swearing off of them altogether. The horror show one has been going through with Mazda's multiple failed attempts to fix his rear drive Mazda's manual transmission you could write a book about. Now that the warranty is over he is stuck with a car prone to transmission failure and he is not really pushing it not being known as an aggressive driver. The last Mazda I took for a test drive was front wheel drive and really prone to bad torque steer. I was pulling off the highway ramp and gave it a little throttle to merge with traffic in second gear at around 1800 rpm and the thing just started hopping to the right toward the curb. Yes that was 7 years ago and the Miata is rear wheel drive but most manufacturers had overcome that in the 1980's and yet here was a fairly low powered 4 cylinder Mazda in the 21st Century with really bad torque steer.

Then there is the wording of some for sale ads you see for Miata's stating that theirs does not have the troublesome engine like some of the others. Whats up with that?

[dougpaulburdick1200]

I'll tell ya, Fiat has never been anything if not exasperating. My X 1/9s were always love/hate relationships because they were always just short of being the great sports cars I knew they could've been. They were just alittle to slow, not enough leg room, elbow room, etc. So I bought a Scorpion, thinking it would be the best of both worlds. A combination of the best traits in a spider,(TC engine, more room) and the modern style and handling of the X. Wrong on all points and then some. The car was not as well balanced as the X, the brakes were either too much or too little, Engine prone to overheating and noisey! The best we can do is to make the best of our old spiders and such, since it's too much to ask Fiat to produce a truly exciting Italian sports car for us.

[bradartigue]

I'll tell ya, Fiat has never been anything if not exasperating. My X 1/9s were always love/hate relationships because they were always just short of being the great sports cars I knew they could've been. They were just alittle to slow, not enough leg room, elbow room, etc. So I bought a Scorpion, thinking it would be the best of both worlds. A combination of the best traits in a spider,(TC engine, more room) and the modern style and handling of the X. Wrong on all points and then some. The car was not as well balanced as the X, the brakes were either too much or too little, Engine prone to overheating and noisey! The best we can do is to make the best of our old spiders and such, since it's too much to ask Fiat to produce a truly exciting Italian sports car for us.

So true - the Scorpion should have been everything it wasn't. In the end it was just an economy car with a cool body. But really they all were - the X1/9 and 124 Spider were bodied by master sports car builders but underneath, fairly pedestrian cars. The X1/9 I would say is a true exotic - anything that weird is exotic - the Spider was a fairly straightforward car.

You have to keep in mind that the vast majority of sales are not of "sports" cars. You get people into the dealership with the sports cars, and a few get sold, but most buy the practical stuff.

[kmead]

Regarding Mazda reliability etc

Dealers are dealers and different ones have varied levels of competency.

Miatas have been extremely reliable over the course of their production. The biggest issue with them was early on with the short nose crank which would eventually separate the main pulleys off the front of the crank shaft, this effected the earliest cars during the first year and a half of production (pre 1992 cars). Most all of those cars are either long gone or have been upgraded to the long nose crank. We bought a Miata for my wife with 100k on it two years ago and it has required no maintenance since. They are not perfect cars but are pretty damn good.

A Miata based 124 will be very different from the cars of olde, it really is much more of a sports car. As in it is a much greater day to day compromise towards performance than the all a rounder that a 124 is. It will be smaller inside, seating will be lower and it is definitely not going to be the boulevardier that a stock 124 is. Where a 124 rides well, is roomy, offers a balanced trade off of performance, the Miata based one will be more like an X1/9 in the immediacy, the sense of being down in the car and it's close coupled nature. This is not a ding in any way to the classic 124 Spider, in many ways I prefer driving a 124 to driving my wife's Miata (which technologically is much closer to a late Spider than this new one will be to our 1992 Miata).

As to what it will look like, I doubt a single exterior panel will be shared between the cars, from the back of the flywheel on the engine the driveline will be all Mazda with different tuning of the shocks/springs and the ratios in the transmission to better relate to the Fiat turbo motor we will be getting. The interior will have identical physical relationships of the seats to the pedals, steering wheel etc of the Miata but will have its own instrument panel, steering whee, seatsl etc. In general the car will be much tighter and close coupled to the driver than we are used to and given our crotchety old man nature many will not like it nor will our knees and backs allow us to get into it. Try on a current Miata in the showroom to better understand this statement

As to what it will look like we can hope for cues to our old cars and there may be some but a lot has changed from a regulation stand point and some of the styling cues we are used to are no longer possible. We should also look at the progression of the cars that led to the 124 Spider, starting with the 1200, 1500 and the their forbearers. The 124 Spider came from a failed styling concept for another car (ie one Pinnin tried to sell to another customer) so the car we all know and love had little relationship to any Fiat that had come before it. Keep this in mind as you evaluate the new design before you chuff it out of ha d as not being a 124 Spider. Nearly 50 years after its introduction there is going to have been some significant change even if they had been producing a Spider throughout that time.

Personally I look forward to this turn of events. I like the 500 they sell now but not enough to actually buy one. I own a variety of sporty (for the time) Fiats and those are the ones I have always preferred, the 128, 124 sedan and 131 never really appealed. A new actual sports car is what I have hoped we would get and it looks like we will likely get one in spades. This looks like my opportunity to actually buy a new one since I passed on a new X back in 1982, I hope I am not disappointed in what they present.

[RoyBatty]

Funny thing to me is.
When they originally designed the first Miata, their goals were to achieve the sports car experience of cars like our old 124's and others similar to it.
I remember reading a magazine article that mentioned how much time the engineers spent in trying to capture so much as even the right exhaust note to reproduce the european sports car sound.

[Mattt123]

Oh well, too bad. Looks like a Miata.

[autotransgression]

If it is to be released as a 2016 the design and development is most likely completed by now. Whatever the final design turns out to look like (those photoshop guesses are just that - guesses) we can be sure it will include airbags, electric power steering, abs, a/c, power brakes, a navigation option, maybe paddle shifters, 6 or more rear ratios, plus myriad other other modern safety/compliance stuff required by Uncle Sam to be sold here. Which means the new spider will be heavier than our old spiders, for sure. Along with having more power, faster acceleration, better handling, no "monkey arms" ergonomics, and less luggage space. I, for one, am very happy about the possibility of having another choice in an all too small market for affordable roadsters in the US.

The answer to the "chick car" stigma is simple. Drive an Miata, hard, on a winding road and report back after you manage to wipe the grin off your face. Mazda knows how to build and tune a great chassis/suspension combination. Think RX7, RX8, and MX5, all great driver's cars. Most new cars share platforms. Having the MX5 platform underpinning the new spider is a good thing. Give it a 160hp turbo, 6 speeds, with even halfway decent looks it will be a unique car for American roads.

One thing is certain, it will not be much like our '85 and older cars. Then again, what cars sold today are anything like an '85 or older model of the same make? My guess (there we go again!) this car priced comparable to or slightly above the Miata and billed as a more 'premium' product by Fiat. Time will tell, but as soon as one hits Fiat of Portland I plan taking an afternoon to go check it out.

as if your words spilled out of my brain. i agree with each and every point you made. i really can't wait to see the new one.

[RRoller123]

I am convinced that the "chick car" moniker attributed to the Miata arises from the design of its rear end. Feline, female, not Canine, Male in appearance. The rest of the car is fine, imho.

[SoFlaFiat]

I am convinced that the "chick car" moniker attributed to the Miata arises from the design of its rear end. Feline, female, not Canine, Male in appearance. The rest of the car is fine, imho.

All this time I thought it was Jay's fault!! Aww, it's his birthday, I should hold the abuse until tomorrow.

[RRoller123]

Hahahah!!!