The Little Things About the Mazda MX-5 NC

Alright, let’s clear something up right off the top: we all love it when our stuff feels a little special. Whether it’s a car, a collection of artisanal hot sauces, or a houseplant that hasn’t died yet, there’s a weird thrill in thinking yep, mine’s got that extra spark. It’s basic human nature. So with that in mind, and before you roll your eyes too hard, please forgive the enthusiastic ramblings of someone who’s way too emotionally invested in an inanimate object.

I’ve had my little two-seater sports car since the first week of March, and in that time, it’s already taught me a lot about the engineering and design quirks of the Mazda MX-5 Roadster. Before buying it, I did my research and thought I had a pretty solid grip on the NC model. Turns out, there were many more layers I hadn’t uncovered.

For example, the Japanese domestic version of the early NC MX-5 was more advanced than the North American one. It came with a better HVAC system, sharper headlights, a fancier key fob, and even a superior sound system. Apparently, Japan – quite naturally when you think about it – got the VIP treatment while the rest of us waited patiently.

Also, the attention to detail in the Roadster’s cabin blew me away. Noise levels, airflow, driver comfort; those engineers at Mazda were really flexing. I learned just how brilliant the soft top design is, especially compared to other sports cars, both contemporary to the MX-5, and the NA and NB models prior to my first year NC, made in 2005. 

I’ve put around 2,500 kilometers on it so far and I’m settling into its rhythm nicely. I’m even comfortable with right-hand drive now, although I still turn on the wipers half the time I try to signal.

Here’s everything I’ve learned so far about the Japanese market 2005 Mazda MX-5 Roadster, the first year of the NC generation. Also it’s important to keep in mind when you buy a used car, you are subject to whatever options and choices the original owner made when purchasing it new. So some of the things I’m about to write may be based on my car’s original owner choosing some choice options from the factory, above and beyond what the “spec” build was in 2005.

Japan-Only Advanced HVAC System (aka The Unsung Hero of Top-Down Driving)

Spend five minutes poking around car enthusiast forums and you’ll learn that Mazda’s HVAC system designs are seriously admired, particularly for a “non luxury” vehicle. Especially in the MX-5, where the heater and fan setup has evolved into a cleverly engineered, roof-down premium comfort machine. Simple to use, easy to understand, and smart enough to keep you warm (or cool, on hot days) while the wind runs through your hair.

Since 2009, North American MX-5s started offering an automatic climate control system on certain trims. And it’s not just any system. This thing is practically clairvoyant. It keeps tabs on whether you’ve turned on the heated seats, checks a sunlight sensor on the dash, monitors the cabin temperature from underneath the steering column, factors in your driving speed, and even knows if you have the roof up, or folded down.

You can run it in semi-automatic mode or go fully automatic if you’ve got the full trust vibe going. Semi-auto gives you options: either pick the fan speed and let the car decide which vents to use, or choose the vents and let the car manage the fan. Full auto means the car handles both. All you do is pick your desired temperature and let the system do its thing.

If your eyes are glazing over from all this HVAC talk, here’s the simple version. Ever see someone driving their MX-5 on the highway, top down, with the outside temperature hovering around 5°C, and wonder if they’ve lost their mind? They haven’t. The car is designed to handle that. It automatically pushes hot air down into the lower cabin, matching the fan speed to how fast you’re going. Result? A warm bubble of comfort that somehow exists in an open air cockpit.

I’ve driven mine with the roof down when it was 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (about 40F) outside. Aside from the top of your head, the rest of you stays impressively comfortable. With heated seats on, you might even forget it’s cold out. And yes, all of this happens automatically if you have the climate control system that came standard on North American models from 2009 onward.

Or… if you have the 2005-onward Japan market MX-5, like I do.

Because it looks like Mazda gave their home market the good stuff four and a half years earlier. My 2005 NC VS came with automatic climate control straight from the factory. And it has another perk: the heating system delivers hot air within 2-3 minutes after a cold start of the car. By comparison, my 2004 Volkswagen Jetta takes up to 10 minutes of run time to deliver decently warm cabin air on cold days. 

And it’s not just the HVAC that keeps you comfortable in weird weather. The wind management on the NC is next level. Mazda knew exactly what they were doing when they built it. They made a convertible you can actually drive top-down in conditions that would normally have you questioning your life choices and reaching for thermal underwear.

The MX-5 Cockpit Experience, Roof Stowed Mode

The brains behind Mazda’s NC MX-5 design really outdid themselves. If you take advantage of all the little features they engineered: windows up, centre back wind diffuser in position, Bose 7-speaker premium system doing its “autopilot” thing, and HVAC on full auto, you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comfortable roof-down cabin. It works in anything from “mild Canadian winter” (about 3°C) all the way up to “please don’t let me melt” (32°C+), at any speed you dare to cruise.

Even if you roll the main windows down, Mazda left in a clever little static “diffuser” window toward the front of the door. It doesn’t move, but it still manages to redirect enough outside air to make the cabin warmer and quieter. Drive with the door windows up? A conversation-friendly zone exists inside the car, even while barreling down the highway. There’s hardly any wind inside, and at higher speeds it feels like the cabin’s developing its own isolated pressure bubble to keep the chill, wind and noise out.

Here’s how impressive it is: the top-down, windows up MX-5 on the highway is quieter, and less wind intrusions than my VW Jetta with the front windows rolled down, at highway speeds. If you had told me that before I drove both cars, I wouldn’t have believed it.

All this clever airflow means the HVAC can do its job without breaking a sweat. On cold days, the heater keeps things toasty. On hot days, the AC cools it down just fine. I was genuinely impressed. I once drove from Vancouver to Harrison Hot Springs with the roof tucked away, cruising at 100–130 km/h in 4°C weather, and I was so warm I had to turn the seat heaters off. It felt borderline luxurious.

I haven’t tried the AC system yet on a sweltering summer day, but I wouldn’t bet against it doing its job.

Now, about that Bose stereo “autopilot” mode I mentioned: the advanced audio system in my 2005 MX-5 (which wasn’t available in N. American trims until 2007) registers the car’s speed, roof position, and even window status, then auto-adjusts the volume and speakers’ direction to keep your music sounding just right. All with 2005 tech!

No wonder NC owners hesitate to swap it out for a touchscreen unit. If they did so, they’d lose the Bose autopilot system and the 200W amplifier that sits behind the car seats. In my case, one of the first things I did was hook up a 3.5mm audio jack adapter to the Bose head unit’s “AUX” plug, and I connected that to a little $15 U-Green USB HiFi Bluetooth receiver to it. I have full access to my music streaming services this way, but still have the OEM audio system in the car.

The only downside is, my FM radio goes from 77mhz to 90mhz (the Japan market frequencies), where we have radio from 87mhz to 108mhz here. So I can’t listen to most radio stations in Victoria.

Brilliant Manual Soft Top

The NC Model’s soft top is a veritable engineering work of art. Mazda designed a full canvas (some models are vinyl) soft top that can be put up or down in 5 seconds or less. The genius of it all is the Z-fold frame design, and how Mazda decided to make the roof partially visible – but still beautiful, sleek, and part of the lines of the car – when the top’s down.

It’s the kind of engineering that makes you wonder why all convertibles aren’t this easy. No fiddly clips, snaps, or weird contortions required. It takes my mate Henry a good 5+ minutes to put the roof on his MG up or down. It took me even longer to do so on a Geo Tracker. On my MX-5? Just one central latch and a smooth flick of the wrist, and it folds down neatly like origami built by someone who really, really loves cars. 

And when it’s stowed? It tucks in so tight and tidy behind the seats that the trunk remains gloriously untouched. You still have full cargo space in the trunk, enough for weekend getaways, or more realistically, a few grocery bags and a backpack. Other cars, particularly those with automatic soft top systems, eat up a lot of their trunk space. Not so on the MX-5 NC model.

The only downside of the soft top is replacement cost. Because it’s a very complex engineered system and frame designed for dead simple operation, when it comes time to replace the roof (which you will eventually have to do), that job is a doozy. I’ve had quotes: material cost is $1,250-$1,500 (not too bad) and labour to do the swap is $1,500 to $2,000 (that’s a lot). I’ve heard Americans can get it done for around $1,250-$1,500 all in (US dollars). It is double that ($3,000+) in Canada.

Headlights – Great and Not So Great

I discovered my JDM MX-5 has better headlights than the first NC generation US/Canada cars did.

I have HID Xenon Projector headlights on my JDM NC MX-5; these apparently weren’t available on the North American models until the 2009 2nd edition of the NC variant. In fact, Japan had two upgraded headlights – the HDI Xenon Projectors, and the Halogen Projectors on the NC1s, where the US and Canadian NC1s had the lower spec Halogen Reflectors only for 2006-2009. (I could be wrong on this).

There is a downside to this though, and one that is making me shop around for new headlights.

The JDM headlights on my car are designed for left hand driving, with traffic coming at you on the right hand side. Basically the opposite of how we drive in North America. That means my left headlight beam is higher, and spread out over the left front side of the car, and my right headlight is lower, and a tighter beam, not spilling out off the side of the road here. I have done my own adjustments to the lights – lowering the left, raising the right – as well as adjusting the horizontal pitch of both lights, but they still aren’t 100% correct for right side road driving in North America.

Such a shame because, if I install N. American NC1 headlights, I’ll be installing lower quality headlights, but at least they’ll have the proper beam pattern and cut for North American roads.

Driving the JDM Mazda MX-5 NC1 for 45 Days

I’ve put about 3,500kms on this car in 45 days, which is a lot for me. I’ve learned a few things.

First, it really is invisible to some of the lesser-capable pickup truck drivers out there. Twice now I’ve had pick up trucks change lanes, cutting me off (to the point where I have to brake hard or I will be hit) because they don’t see the little Roadster in their blind spots. I’ve learned quickly if you drive a MX-5, treat it like a motorcycle in terms of visibility for other vehicles on the road.

Second, this car absolutely loves third gear. It lives for, and lives in third gear. That gear has the most torque, the most range (30kph-125kph redline), the most oomph and action. 3rd gear is the city cruise gear with speed limits of 30-50km/h. 3rd gear is your overtake gear on the highway, up to 125kph. 3rd gear is the quick acceleration gear when getting onto a highway on-ramp and wanting to get up to speed as quickly as possible. 3rd gear is the gear you ride out of back country road curve when you want to put the power on and dance out the back end of the car for a brief moment. 

Second gear is a noisy, semi-torque-filled gear; it is more like the “hey, let me hand you off to third gear” gear. Fourth gear is similar, but for the higher end stuff. If you are cruising on the highway at 110kph, and want to accelerate to pass someone, you could drop into fourth gear and get the job done nicely (though third gear, rev’ing at 5000-7000rpms is even faster for an overtake). Forth gear is also the city driving “economy” gear, but don’t expect a lot of power and pickup; you’ll have to drop to third if you want that.

Fifth gear is the highway cruise gear, and sixth gear is the highway economy cruise gear. Fifth has some life in it; if you are going really fast (like over 160kph), 5th acts like 4th and even a bit like 3rd, but at that higher speed (so I’ve been told, I am not admitting to driving over 160kph in this car). 6th has nothing much to offer, other than bringing the car up to its highest rated speeds of around 225kph (135mph) – again, so I’ve been told – and having some mid torque at 5000 RPMs (I imagine the MX-5 would travelling at around 180-200kph if you were doing 5K RPMs in 6th gear).

The engineers knew exactly what they were doing when they designed this transmission and its gear ratios. While every gear in the six-speed gearbox has its role, third gear in the NC is where the car’s character crystallizes most clearly.

Third, I am finally used to driving a RHD car. I feel comfortable now in it, to the point where when I get back into my VW Jetta, I am a bit disoriented. But I am still not used to the signal switch stalk being on the right side of the steering wheel. That’s still going to take some time.

Fourth, and definitely not last, I get a particular thrill out of this car being officially called the Mazda MX-5 Roadster. Only the Japanese variants of the MX-5 are called Roadster (in fact, if you search Japanese parts catalogs, car auctions, etc, don’t search for Miata or even MX-5; search for “Roadster” if you want to find applicable parts). 

I have the official “Roadster” badge on the back of the car, and the carpets, sill plates, and trunk liners have the Roadster name too. You can’t even find the model number “MX-5” anywhere on the car, except on the VIN ID plates. It makes it pretty special: I haven’t seen another Mazda Roadster on Vancouver Island yet.

Say Hello to Bess

I’ve only named two cars in my life – a Geo Tracker (because the bigger bullies of the SUV world laughed at her, she needed a name so I could comfort her) – and my first car, a 1982 Honda Civic. Lil’ Geo and Jesse. 

Well, I decided to give the MX-5 a name. It’s a 20 year old car, and that is old in terms of cars – not old enough to be “vintage” but way older than the cars people typically drive these days. I wanted to give it an old, comfortable name. 

Bess came to mind. Ole Bess to some, but for me, it’s the best darned car I’ve ever owned, my bestie, so I’m now calling it Bess. 

Beata doesn’t like the name, but I think it’ll grow on her. “Let’s go for a ride in Bess, Hon!”