Mazda Debuts MX-5 Roadster Coupe at 2006 British Motor Show
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Mazda introduced the MX-5 Roadster Coupe at the 2006 British Motor Show. This trick MX-5 features a two piece folding metal roof that through some miracle of engineering fits in the same space as the softtop version. The result is a top that doesn’t take up any additional trunk space over the standard softtop version, however it does put on an extra 66 pounds. To compensate for this additional weight, Mazda has tuned the suspension specifically to fit the needs of the MX-5 Roadster Coupe. Mazda claims that the top is the fastest electrically opening hard top on the market, with retraction taking just 12 seconds to accomplish. For those of us in the good ole U.S. of A., we can expect to see this model in the early Spring of 2007.
wow, any reason I might have had to get a z3 coupe or a solstice/sky just went out the window. f-ing sweet… so with another 66 lbs for the top and stiffer springs, is it even 2600 lbs? amazing. hopefully the mazdaspeed and roadster coupe mx-5 options won’t be mutually exclusive. a turbo new mx-5 with a folding hard roof? I’d never look at an s2000 again!
When Engineers Attack: SuperDuty Version
Car photog Chris Doane, whose partial shots of prototypes and near-production models have graced these very pages, recently faced down one of nature’s fiercest adversaries: The automotive test engineer. As Doane was casually shooting a “low value ta…