7 Cars Based On The Mazda MX-5

The Mazda MX-5 is brilliant. Yeah, hot take, we know. There’s a reason it’s endured for so long – it absolutely nailed the roadster recipe, with a throaty four-pot engine, manual gearbox and a beautifully balanced rear-drive chassis. Throw in its excellent reliability and attainability, and it’s no wonder most of its rivals gave up trying to beat it.

In fact, it’s a wonder more manufacturers haven’t tried to team up with Mazda to have their own takes on the MX-5 in our modern age of platform sharing. Most of the cars that borrow the sports car’s underpinnings tend to be weird, low-volume things put together by companies existing on the fringes of the automotive industry. Most of them, anyway. Here are seven of our favourite MX-5-based cars.

Fiat 124 Spider

The only time another big OEM has teamed up with Mazda to borrow some Miata brilliance, the car that became the Fiat 124 Spider started out in life as a plan to spin a new Alfa Romeo Spider off the fourth-gen MX-5’s chassis.

During the project’s development, though, the tie-up instead moved over to Fiat, which borrowed the MX-5’s underpinnings for a revival of its 124 Spider. The chassis and interior were nigh-on identical, but the 124 got retro looks, a turbocharged Fiat engine instead of a nat-asp Mazda one, and a softer, more touring-oriented setup.

This last point was arguably its downfall, something even the harder, more powerful Abarth version couldn’t really address. It ended up being dropped in 2019 after just three short years on sale, while the ND MX-5 it was twinned with lives on to this day.

Mitsuoka Roadster

Mitsuoka can always be relied on to add a dash of madness to a familiar Japanese car. Take the Roadster, a retro-styled Morgan-alike sitting on a stretched version of the NC MX-5’s chassis.

Known as the Himiko in its native Japan, Roadster was the name given to export versions, because this was one of the only Mitsuoka models to be sold outside of Japan. Specifically, it came to the UK, although at £54,000 a pop, it wasn’t a huge success. We have no idea how many were actually sold, but we’ve certainly never seen one.

Mitsuoka Rock Star

Mitsuoka wasn’t done with the MX-5 after the Roadster, though. In 2018, it unveiled the Rock Star, which turned the ND MX-5 into a hot-wash C2 Chevrolet Corvette. The Google Translated blurb on Mitsuoka’s website explains it neatly:

“Even when people looked down on me, I believed in my dreams. But truth is I was scared. I pretended to be alright. Truth is I was eager for love, I wanted you to see. In a town that shines under the rain, Your eyes lead me. You told me 'Just fly freely'. I can fly! Now I can fly. I can do it! Now I am free.”

Actually, that doesn’t explain anything. But as much as it feels like it shouldn’t, the Rock Star… kinda works? The shrunken ’Vette proportions wrap nicely around the MX-5's classic roadster proportions, and it juuust about stays on the right side of kitschy.

Hurtan Grand Albaycin

Other than SEAT, the car industry of Spain is a strange place, full of low-volume companies making all sorts of weirdness. Nowhere is this summed up better than the Hurtan Grand Albaycin, a rebodied ND MX-5 that looks a bit like a badly-trained AI image generator has tried to draw a classic British sports car.

Supposedly, when it was unveiled in 2021, pricing started at €59,000, but we’ve spotted one for sale second-hand for over twice that. In all honesty, we’re not sure it’s worth it.

Image: Andrew Bone, CC BY 2.0

MEV Exocet

The Exocet kit car involves taking a first-, second- or third-gen MX-5 – often one with a rotten body and chassis – salvaging the good stuff like the engine, gearbox and suspension, and attaching it all to an ultralight spaceframe chassis that looks like a cross between an Ariel Atom and a Caterham.

If that doesn’t sound appealing enough, you can also get an off-road version that throws in long-travel suspension and knobbly tyres for a budget home-build alternative to an Ariel Nomad. We can’t think of much that would be more fun.

Tipo 184

If a miniature Baja buggy doesn’t sound like your bag, though, what about a baby 1950s Grand Prix racer? That’s what you get with the Tipo 184, which sees the NB MX-5’s excellent running gear mated to what looks like one of Fangio’s old rides that’s been hit with a shrink ray.

There’s even an option to make it road-legal in the UK, meaning you can use it to zoom off to the pub on a sunny Sunday afternoon, pretending you’re hammering round a pre-chicane Monza. As long as you don’t want to bring any mates, anyway.

Healy Enigma

Aptly, this car’s a bit of a mystery. Clearly inspired by the classic Austin-Healey sports car, it’s supposedly based around a bespoke chassis, although the bonnet, doors, windscreen and windows all come from an NC MX-5, as does the running gear (although the company behind it will also throw a 4.0-litre Lexus V8 in it instead, if you really hate tyres).

It also features the strange pairing of R53 Mini headlights and K11 Nissan Micra rear lights. We can’t even track down a website for the company that builds it, which one source says can supply it as a kit but also builds turnkey cars in a factory somewhere in eastern Europe. Apparently, there were earlier versions based on first- and second-gen MX-5s, too, but good luck finding even a scrap of concrete info about those. Enigma indeed.