Long-term report: Say hello to the wonderful Mazda MX-5 RF

“You must be mad”, came the reply from my colleague when I said I had an idea to live with a sports car for six months, four of which would be in deepest, darkest winter.

But this wasn’t just any two-seater. Mazda’s MX-5 has been on sale in Britain for 35 years now. And while there are certainly more powerful, flashier and imposing sports cars around, the dinky Mazda has always been there delivering thrills by the bucketload at a bargain price.

In a previous life on a car magazine, I lived with an MX-5 Roadster for six months and found the experience so utterly joyous that I’ve been trying to find an excuse to have another go in one.

Pitching the idea to Mazda elicited a similar response from my colleague, but the brand relented and chucked me the keys to one with a nicely bedded-in 5,000 miles on the clock with the proviso I had to hand it back when the clock ticked onto 12k.

This time around I opted for the RF, which stands for ‘Retractable Fastback’. To you and me, this means it’s the one with the folding hard-top roof.

The RF is proof that the MX-5 has grown up a little bit since it launched way back in 1989, and you could say it’s a little bit softer than the traditional rag-top Roadster model. But that was fine with me as I would be driving the car mostly during a typical miserable British winter.

The MX-5 had a little bit of a nip-and-tuck update last year – a lucky coincidence to justify running another MX-5 as a long-term test car, I felt. There’s a new, wider infotainment screen, the trim levels have been changed, there are some new colours and wheels, and some mechanical tweaks too.

One of those paint shades is the ‘Aero Grey’ of this car – a £570 option. It’s not the first colour you think of for a sports car, and one that I think will take some getting used to, but this Exclusive-Line trim’s black leather seats and subtle grey stitching are spot on in my book.

The RF only comes with the more powerful engine offered in the MX-5 range. It’s a 2.0-litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder petrol engine with 181bhp, and is hooked up to a six-speed manual gearbox. Nothing to write home about, but boy, if you think that, then you’re missing the whole appeal of the MX-5.