Remember when I said that I had the perfect car in mind to close out 2021 with? The car I had in mind was the fourth generation Mazda Roadster, the ND. You see, the Chief Designer of the original NA Roadster, Tanaka Shunji, has sadly passed away on the 12th of December last year, at the age of 75. Now, I'm not going to be the sort of person that pretends to know the guy before the news of their passing, but it still strikes me as a sad loss nonetheless. For what it's worth, this week here at our humble club is dedicated to you, Tanaka–sama.
At a glance, there isn't much else left to be said for the Mazda Roadster that isn't already common knowledge. Having changed so little in its recipe since its inception in 1989, anyone who's ever been around cars know what the instant classic is, what it represents, the things it can make a driver feel, and of course, the things it can't. Low powered, lightweight, often cramped, simplistic, front engine, rear wheel drive, with some of the best ergonomics in the industry with regards to steering feel, stick shift feel, and seating position in the world that would make even the most cynical and jaded of automotive journalists chuckle during a drive. Its low cost of entry, mechanical simplicity, impeccable balance, and the resulting delightful neutrality all make the Roadster a common entry point into more spirited driving, from sanctioned cup car events, insane aftermarket builds, and even the stupid idiot with more money and unfounded confidence than experience in a RWD platform. Trust me, I know this fact far better than I'd like. It's the reason why it was nigh impossible for a time to book a test drive of a Mazda Roadster here in Singapore, and I still have the right side mirror of an NC that punched a hole into the fence of a compound I was "working" security at, which had to be patched up with concertina wire... in the still pouring rain... by me and a few others after our shift.
I know the opening two paragraphs of this review have been ultra bummers. But I think it's an important reminder that, in spite of its cute and unassuming looks, the barebones Roadster is certainly capable of a belying amount of bite, and certainly will not hesitate to lash out if mistreated. It IS a car renowned for being a great car to learn driving techniques in, after all, so one can't really expect it to be nearly as proactive in nannying a dumb driver and hiding their mistakes from them as something more mainstream and expensive, can it? That I think is part of what makes a Roadster such a darling of a car to drive in a spirited manner, and also such an excruciating rarity in today's market, but that sadly means that such stories of stupid wrecks from first timers is often associated with the car.
Completely unrelated person in the photo, don't mind her.
Not that I consider myself new or inexperienced in the context of the game, but even I became much more acquainted with the bite of the ND Roadster S during race day... as did Vic, whom I transformed from "Victorious" to "Victimised" when I crashed into him in our race at Miyabi. So then, I've learned that the ND Roadster has an indiscriminating appetite for murder, regardless of experience. But what is it that makes it so... hungry for souls? (Yes I'm struggling to write this piece in case you couldn't already tell from the delay in publishing it and the whack analogies.)
Well, the single lightest trim of the ND Roadster, the "S", can't even be optioned with a locking differential. Depending on if you're a glass half full or empty person, you can argue that that's for mass savings to allow the S to be the only trim of the popular fourth generation sports car to weigh in back under the magic tonne for the first time since the original NA generation, or simply being cheap. Whatever the case, the open differential of the Roadster S very quickly becomes apparent when the softly sprung car is being driven hard, struggling to cleanly put down even the meager 128HP (95.4kW) that it packs if the car is too off neutral, easily costing momentum out of a corner while forcing drivers to partially lift, lest they risk the entire car snapping once the spinning inside wheel hooks up like a secondary flywheel you've little control over.
Mazda may flaunt "Jinba–Ittai", "Horse and Rider as One", as its tagline, and perhaps no other car in the company's lineup is poised to embody that sentiment as much as its flagship Roadster, the only RWD model the company offers until the rumours of a new Inline 6 RWD Atenza materialise. However, when I drive the ND Roadster in the game, my experience couldn't be much more at odds with that saying. Instead of the car going and behaving exactly as I intuit it, I find that it's disgustingly soft as a sports car—no matter how crappy a set of tyres I fit on it, the car unabashedly pitches, rolls, and yaws as though stretching its suspension for a warm up. The "S" in "Roadster S" could almost stand for "sloppy". I mean, here, take a look at the car as I accidentally slid it on Turn 10 of Laguna Seca on its default Sport Hard tyres.
You can't tell me this amount of body movement looks at all healthy or conducive for anything. Even with what should be ample ground clearance of 140mm (5.51in), the car is almost bottoming out, and I'm almost certain that the wheels should be scraping the flared arches by now had such been simulated in GTS.
The front springs in particular are so disgustingly flimsy that it makes the RWD car with less power than an FF Honda Fit Hybrid understeer more than said FF Honda Fit Hybrid, and that's not even the most atrocious part! If you fit downgraded Comfort tyres in attempt to make the softly sprung car feel more natural to drive, weight takes so long to slosh over the front tyres when you slam the brakes for a corner that it makes the ABS freak the hell out and think the car has way less grip than it will eventually have. Seriously, you've to brake so early for corners because the 990kg (2,183lbs) Roadster stops so badly, one would think an intern at Mazda neglected to print the first digit in its mass figure—its stopping distances are more akin to a car weighing 1,990kg wearing its Yokohama ADVAN Sport V105 195/50R16 tyres. Turn off ABS, and not only does the car stop much better, but the tyres and steering wheel become more communicative simply because the front tyres are actually being, you know, utilised. I know this issue isn't very prominent on the Sport Hard tyres the car comes with by default, but I'm almost certain the car isn't supposed to come with such grippy tyres, since GTS does have a habit of defaulting every production car with them, causing many of them to feel overly grippy and thrown for a loop. Back in earlier Gran Turismo titles, Roadsters have always come default with Comfort tyres, which makes you work harder for lap times and highlight the car's natural tendencies more.
Whichever tyre compound you fit on the Roadster, grippy or grotesque, the Roadster Sloppy is so soft that the rear end of the car becomes as eager and integral to the turning experience as the front end, which incidentally is the only end of the car that the steering wheel is connected to, in case that needed spelling out. The rear end of the car will peek and swing out as though you're Scandi Flicking it if you're too rough with your steering wheel, setting it up for a drift that the car hasn't the power or the locking differential to hold. The rear end of the car sways so much under hard lateral loads that, if you were to, say, attempt to use every millimetre of a track in a pylon course, you'd be smacking the pylons with the rear fenders of the car more often than the front, which is like... oh I don't know. I don't even have a funny quip for that; it's just tragic.
That in itself would've made the car dangerous enough, but couple that with the embarrassing single–point tyre contact physics of this "Real Driving Simulator", and you have in your hands and under your feet an express, non stop bathtub to hell, via rumble strips, uneven road surfaces, or just good old fashioned grass, the last of which caught me out at Miyabi when I pulled the car to the left for "Turn" 2, a flat out left kink. I was using every millimetre of the track on the rightmost edge when I turned too hard, causing the rear end to sway into the grass, causing the crash.
So in conclusion, it's soft and imprecise like a slinky. It's prone to snap oversteering. It understeers like hell on corner entry and exit. It's absurdly dangerous to drive quickly on any tyre compound. Am I dreaming? Or am I going insane?
I think that I might have been spoiled silly by all the faster, louder cars in the game. It's hard not to when the game forces GT500s, LMP1s, or at the very least, a pedestrian 911 GT3 RS on you every now and then. Standards are stupidly high in a digital fantasy that is this game and the life it lends us. Everything is loud, quick, precise, stiff, grippy, hardcore, and built with a larger budget. But what those cars never really offer, or at least highlight to me as much, is the natural tendencies of a chassis suspended above four wheels, and the blistering purity of it. Yes, it pitches, rolls, and yaws all the time, like an incessant kid begging for your attention, never letting you feel it safe to leave them unattended for even a short time. That's just what a car is naturally wont to do. Yes, you'll need to wring out the naturally aspirated 1.5L SkyActiv engine to get it to do anything, which means you'll need to be very busy with the shortly geared 6 speed manual that's the only gearbox offered on the S. That's just what engines are naturally like without turbos and hybrids mucking them up, and there's no better way to control the coupling of gears and flywheels than with a mechanical 6 speed. Do you want to shift it quickly? Do you want the ride to be comfortable instead? Eco mode? Race mode? Launch mode? Drift mode? It's all done with three pedals and a stick rather than through menus with buttons, allowing you to mix and match any mode to any degree that suits any situation on the fly, all without the car ever letting your attention waver from the act of driving it. This, to me, is what driving is about. You pay attention to the car and you control the car, nothing else! To spec a Roadster with an automatic gearbox then, would be akin to listening to a clean version of an Eminem song. Yes, it can still be enjoyable, but such a core, defining part of the experience is taken away to create what is objectively an inferior product! It just feels like such an insult to both the engineers and the customers in the name of sales!
More than anything, a Roadster is a stark reminder of where I stand in the skill department. I mean, yes, of course I get my fat behind served to me on a silver platter by Vic every week, but none of it ever feels as crushing and demoralising as when he does it in a Roadster. There are always excuses, like "eh I suck at driving high downforce cars", "the car doesn't suit my driving style", "I don't understand the stupid way the car is set up" "this gimmicky feature that can't be turned off is stupid and I wish it wasn't here screwing with me", "I feel more with a wheel and I thus worry more when driving", "EU copies of the game are erroneously coded to be faster than Asian and American copies of the game", and so on. With something as blisteringly simplistic as a Roadster, and with how much emphasis it puts on raw driving skills and precision in turn, seeing Vic pull a half second gap on me in one corner is C R U S H I N G . It makes me angry at myself. It makes me frustrated. It makes me frantically question where I went wrong in that last corner. Did I brake too early? Should I slide the car more or less? Did I use the right gear? What sort of a monster line is he drawing that I'm not? It draws out a competitive side of me I don't much like because it does me no good. It makes me beat myself up. As much as I complain about and critique cars, I'm worse on people, especially myself. It's why writing car reviews is a cathartic release for me, because I get to piss and moan about an unfeeling machine with objective facts and don't have to fear hurting anyone... aside from myself when I get too competitive, hence why I quit Sport Mode.
But, that resurgence of my competitive side did at least allow me to race wheel to wheel with Vic for a victory, which is something I felt I hadn't managed to do as much as I'd like to, as much as I know I can. And this week with the Roadster, I didn't even need Bathurst or a wildcard car to do it!
Yes, the Roadster will make you hemorrhage time with even the tiniest of mistakes, and seeing someone pull on you in equal machinery because of that is heart wrenching. But I definitely found myself in a sort of zone, a trance of some kind, when I got familiar with its tendencies at its limits and used to accommodating for its weaknesses and pitfalls in my driving, allowing me to push it hard. And in that state, having wheel to wheel fights and inappropriately rubbing the coating of my gorgeous Soul Red Premium Metallic paint on my friends in a hard fought, but fair and respectful battle was simply exhilarating without ever feeling overwhelming. In no other car did watching the time gap delta slowly come down to the car in front feel as deserving and fulfilling as it did in the ND. And not once did I ever feel like the car was ever going to betray me, or lash out in an unexpected fashion once I got into its groove. It is an incredible joy to do battle in a steed as loyal and fair as the Roadster.
The thing about the Roadster is that you can't treat it as a tool, a means to an end, like you could a racecar. It isn't going to simply give you what you want the moment you ask for it with no drama. It's a dance partner. One you have to respect, get to know, and accommodate. It may be a cheap, barebones car. It may not vector torque for you, it might not remind you to keep both hands on the wheel, and it certainly won't monitor your body's physical condition to detect when you're drowsy and need a break from driving. But, in their place, the Roadster has the single best safety feature to ever be equipped to a car: the driver's respect and fear. It can never be taken for granted. It will make you more attentive a driver, and I would go as far as to argue that, over time, it will make you a faster and safer driver as well. How much you manage to take away from your time in a Roadster then, I think largely depends on how much you're willing to put into it. It is an excellent mirror that forces you to take a long, hard, and perhaps uncomfortable look at yourself, and what you see when that happens is entirely up to you as a driver, as a person.
And it's why my time with the ND Roadster this week has been a very bittersweet one. It's... complex. I thought I'd come in raving about how the ND Roadster is among the best cars on sale today, how Mazda is the single best car company, how I'll sprout useless trivia and facts, and hyperbole like how I'd be willing to fight anyone who disagrees. But instead, I've come to respect and fear the Roadster a lot more instead, and direct critique towards myself rather than at the car for shortcomings. Is it a good car? Would I recommend it? I can't tell. If an FD RX-7 can be likened to having a strong expresso shot, then the Roadster is preferring one's coffee without milk, sugar, or ice. Maybe even without water. It can be stupidly intense. It's not for everybody. Those looking for an outright track toy would be better served in an 86 or a... oh I dunno, a 911 GT3. But for those who can glean value from its very niche and harsh offerings, there is nothing else that can offer what the Roadster can without the sugarcoating of critique, and the resultant clarity of which that is sought after by those select few. Trust me, I never thought I'd be saying that about the car that has a Guinness World Record for being the best selling two seat open top sports car.
To see just how closely the ND Roadster went back to its roots, I drove the genesis of the Roadster, a stock 1989 NA, during race day on Goodwood. It didn't take long at all for me to realise just how little has changed in the quarter of a century that separates those cars! Aside from my very pronounced acceleration deficit, everything that the ND Roadster demanded of me, every single thing it made me avoid doing and encouraged me to do, the NA did as well. It's still freakishly soft. It still demands you rev the crap out of the small, naturally aspirated engine. It similarly doesn't have a locking diff, and it sure as hell wouldn't save you if you muck something up either. It even gets into the exact same troubles in the exact same ways as the ND after all these years! Power understeer? One tyre fires? One wheel into the grass? Off you go! In fact, aside from having one less forward cog and being slower on a straight, the only real difference I can tell between the two cars with regards to how they drive is that the older car is a lot narrower with a shorter wheelbase, which makes maneuvering through tight quarters like "The Chicane" of Goodwood slightly easier. That's it.
Driving both the NA and ND Roadsters, especially after all the supercar and racecar shenanigans week after week, almost feels like reuniting with a high school crush after a long time. I'm shocked by how little she's changed over the years despite us being well into our adulthoods by now, but at the same time, I also can't help but to relish in the opportunity to pare myself back to a simpler time and be a simpler me. Kick up a playful, harmless fuss and have fun at it, who cares? What's the worst that can happen? Despite all that coffee, fangs, and intensity talk earlier, the Roadster has a flipside that draws out a person's inner child when it's not being taken seriously. She's still the same cheerful, fun to be around, pretty girl after all these years. In fact, the only thing about her that's changed is that she's in grown up clothes now, and hot damn does she know how to pull them off! It makes me highly respect and value it for not being swept away by having to impress others and chasing numbers, because I know first hand just how difficult that is, being the odd kid out in school who always just wanted to fit in and belong. Many may complain that the Roadster lacks power, but that blistering confidence in itself, and the joys it can bring to everyone around it, is its own brand of strength in my eyes.
Tanaka Shunji's NA Roadster is painted in his favourite colour, purple, with matching purple leather seats. But, to most eyes in most situations, the purple is so dark that it wouldn't appear as anything other than black. Only when the light hits just right will the purple reveal its true colour, so to speak. Just like a Nou Mask that Tanaka–san cites to have inspired his car design, a non living surface somehow has to convey several different expressions and emotions without ever changing its form, instead relying on different lighting to portray different emotions. Either by design or by sheer coincidence, that is such a strangely apropos way to look at a Roadster as well: to most people in most normal situations, it's just a cheap, cheerful, peppy, and perhaps beautiful car. But when one tries to coax every m/s from the car through a bend, to use every millimetre of the road, and to shave off every millisecond of a stopwatch, that's when a Roadster will show its true colours.
I think a lot of us car enthusiasts prefer the older models of a lineage of cars. The NA NSXes, the A80 Supra, or the front engined Corvettes for example. We scream and write up a storm of drama and expletives to bemoan their loss and to put down their successors, so much so that sometimes I think we forget that there's a car that hasn't changed at all in all the important areas, and has made pronounced strides forward in all the right areas while preserving its identity. It's easy to forget because that car is so easy to take for granted, because it never went away, and hopefully never will. I think it's unfair and unhealthy to not celebrate these small victories we have, and gush about the things that the automotive industry got right, so here's me gushing.
In fact, while I'm at it, I'll even gush about another person! Itou Azusa!
Sorry, the video is only in Japanese with no subtitles at the moment.
Itou-san is an automotive writer and illustrator, who occasionally presents car reviews for the CARPRIME channels. When she started her job as an automotive journalist in 2015, the ND Roadster had just premiered in Japan. Despite never having driven anything out of the ordinary, she decided to take up driving the company's Roadster to learn more about the job and gain some insight and perspective. She wound up liking the car so much that she bought her own ND Roadster—in NR-A spec! Sporting height adjustable Bilstein dampers, larger diameter brake rotors, a reinforced driveshaft, and a limited slip differential all as standard, the NR-A is the pared back, hardcore, motorsport base model made for easy track use, which the roll cage equipped, fanged car of Itou-san clearly sees, wearing the Roadster Endurance's mandated Bridgestone Adrenalin RE004 tyres, swapped out bucket seats, ENDLESS brake calipers, stone chips, and track day inspection stickers on her car's body. That's right: she partakes in endurance races with her own daily! How cool is that?! Here in Singapore it's hard enough to find anyone who drives stick, urgh! Driving the base Roadster, the S, in Gran Turismo Sport and being so disgusted by its softness, I really do wonder if the NR-A with its Bilstein Dampers feels any stiffer on the track.
With the Roadster being such an integral part of her life both personally and professionally, she says that they have become part of her life, and that she'd be utterly lost without her Roadsters, not being able to do her job nor have fun in her off time. She even went as far as to say that if her future husband is against her driving them, she'd probably divorce him! Yet, despite all those harsh statements, she's so cutely embarrassed to be presenting her own car, saying it's impossible to critique the car fairly. Even simple things like saying "the shift from 1st to 2nd feels so good", feels as ridiculous as saying "air and water are delicious!" It's such a given in life that it feels asinine to point out. She then goes on a perhaps too personal ramble about how her car and her interactions with it has become more than woman and machine, to be something more akin to friends, lovers, family, or something else in similar vein.
I feel like I know that feeling of going on way too personal tangents when "reviewing" cars too.
I think I'm in love.
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