Question: can a car become indelibly attached to single person?
When I sold my Corvette Z06, the car passed through two fellow autocrossers who kept its flame alive as “the terrible Corvette that John sold in a huff.” Finally it got sold to an autocrosser whom I didn’t know very well, and the last I heard of that car was the new owner messaging me on Facebook Messenger stating that he had my old car and asking me a question about whether or not the stock radio could go back into the dash. I have not heard about that car in the 8+ years since, and for that I’m thankful.
I sold my old ’66 Morgan to Barry. Barry enjoyed that car for the last few years of his life. I would love to have that car back, but the car is now with Barry’s daughter Morgan and the grandkids know that car as granddad’s old car. The fact that that car was once mine is irrelevant, and it should be that way.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought too hard about owner provenance for any other vehicle. But for some reason, when the prospect of getting rid of my red ’09 Miata entered my mind, there was always a little voice in the back of my head that said, “no, you can’t get rid of the car that you bought brand new, that you drove during your formative years as a National Solo competitor, and got you started in time trials.”
When I bought the car new as a young twenty-something year old, I had this romantic idea that perhaps I’d keep this car around until I was much older — a one owner classic sports car. And now I was thinking of abandoning it? Blasphemy!
Don’t ruin your favorite street car
Three years ago, I set in motion my Miata’s eventual departure from the fleet. I bought another Miata to serve as my “nice street car.” The ideas was two different Miatas for two different purposes. One would be the date night car for top down drives to the cider mill in the fall, and the other would be the track terror that I could rip around in without worrying about financial ruin if I wrecked it.
On one hand, I definitely enjoyed having a Miata with a top that I could flick open and closed with my wrist. The street Miata was definitely getting plenty of seat time, as I basically drove it nearly every day during the non-winter months when the weather was nice.
On the other hand, the track Miata was usually collecting dust in the garage. If the car was always ready to be driven, then perhaps I would have spent more time driving the car, but after its last wreck at PittRace back in 2020, it was a constant game of whack-a-mole to fix all of the little problems that kept piling up. Add in the fact that I already had a track ready option with the Mustang Mach 1, and the track Miata basically got very little attention for a very long period of time.
When I got the car back from Pat in 2024, I made a push to get the car ready for one last hurrah at Time Trials Nationals. I got the car back to a state of “drivable on track” and managed to put down a respectable 2:24 lap time, but there were still a bunch of little things on the car that needed to be fixed for me to be truly happy with the car.
The biggest problem was the front bodywork. The front bumper beam and bumper beam mount were bent, and I wanted to install a replacement front bumper to make the car look nice again. But I never found the time to pull the sheet metal on the front end to make the replacement bumper beam and bumper cover fit.
The other big issue was the brakes. One of the front brake calipers was dragging, resulting in the car pulling to the right. One of the brake bleeders in the rear calipers snapped off — fortunately in the closed position — preventing the caliper from being bled. The correct answer was the rebuild all four brake calipers, but again, I didn’t find the time to do that.
Losing the parking space
After the 2024 Time Trials Nats, I parked the Miata in my four car garage at my Dearborn house. I was married and living with Lily some forty minutes north of the house, so getting to the Miata for wrenching sessions was a slog. It didn’t help that of all the cars I owned, only the track Miata was in Dearborn while everything else I owned was with me in Troy, either at my apartment or at my codriver Brandon’s garage.
Because the track Miata was out of sight, it was also out of mind. And so the car just sat. And sat. And sat.
Normally, my philosophy is “if a car doesn’t get used, it’s time to move it along,” but I found it pretty hard to sell the car. Part of it is the sunk cost fallacy, something that I’m usually pretty good at avoiding, but here it was a strong mental road block: the car was never going to be a nice car again, and as it sat wasn’t worth that much money, but it had so much work in parts and tuning thrown at it that I couldn’t bear to let go of all that stuff for so cheap.
The car was worth more dead than alive.
Things came to a head this year when I decided that I needed to sell the Dearborn house. As cheap a place as it is to live in, Lily and I had no interest in moving to Dearborn and settling down there, and I didn’t want to be a landlord forever.
So what to do about the Miata sitting in the garage? I didn’t want to store it inside Brandon’s garage and take up space that could be used by a car I or Brandon actually drove. I could store it outside at Brandon’s, but that would simply be a one way ticket to it decaying into the ground in Brandon’s back yard.
I didn’t have any answers until a fortuitous chance connection.
Make it into a race car!
I had shopped around the idea of making the track Miata into a full blown race car. I had looked over the ChampCar rules and figured that it could be a very competitive race car, and I had proposed the idea of forming another racing team to the friends I’ve run LeMons with before. However, we’re all older and in new, different stages of our lives — read: kids — and the reality was that none of us had the time to build a race car like we did a decade ago.
I was browsing the RoadRaceAutoX.com classifieds when a friend posted their sweet turbocharged Honda Civic for sale. It was an EG hatch in the best color — that 90s teal blue — and I kind of really wanted it. The seller, Chris, was willing to entertain trades, and so I suggested maybe trading my NC Miata for his EG Civic.
After a little bit of back and forth, I discovered that he too was looking for a cheap NC Miata to turn into a Champ Car race car. I eventually relented to common sense and determined that I was in no position to take another street or track toy when I already had too many cars to take care of, but discussions continued about me selling my NC Miata to Chris… stripped of all of the parts that weren’t needed for the Champ Car build.
Here was my chance to “make the most” out of my ratty little Miata: I’d take all of the go-fast parts from the car and sell them separately, and sell a bare but running car to Chris for the last good purpose that the car could fulfill.
We agreed that I would strip the hard top, roll bar, coilover suspension, and drivers bucket seat from the car but leave the Wilwood front brakes, the complete exhaust system, and the tune intact. The car would come on its 17×10 track wheels and the spare wheels, body panels, underbody plastics, and any other spares I had for the brakes and chassis.
It took me about a month to take everything off the car, leaving me with a sad but drivable shell of a car.
Once I was finished, Chris came by with an enclosed trailer and loaded up the Miata and all of its spares. And just like that, I was back down to having just one NC Miata.
Watching the trailer pull away was a bittersweet moment. On one hand, I was relieved that the car was gone and going to a good home. On the other hand, I knew that I would never be able to drive the car as it was when it was at its peak track car state — a car I considered more fun to run around a race track than my much newer and much faster Mustang Mach 1.
Who knows though, I said goodbye to this car once before, and this car has a way of returning back to me…
Selling off everything else
For a brief moment, I considered moving the coilover suspension and my remaining set of wide wheels to my (new) street NC Miata, a 2009 Competition Yellow car. However, I was unwilling to make the ride of my street NC any stiffer, so I eventually relented and put all of my trick stuff up for sale.
The roll bar went to a young kid who was looking to transform his NC1 Miata into a track car. I also managed to sell him my 17×9.5 wheels.
That left the hard top and the coilover suspension. Marc, the one who bought my silver ’09 NC Miata last year, expressed interest. He originally bought my car to use as a replacement daily driver for this rusty ’94 NA Miata, but he was now dipping his toes into Street Touring autocross.
Funny how it seems like all I’ve been doing for the past three years is swap parts between three Miatas. The process will now continue: the hard top and coilovers were sold to Marc for the silver car. We will probably wrap the red hard top in a different color, and the suspension will go on the car once Marc has found a suitable set of 9″ wide wheels.
The small things I kept from the red car
Before the red NC Miata went away, I did take a couple of small things off the car to keep for myself.
The most important thing I grabbed was the steering wheel, a first generation Cipher steering wheel with my preferred thinner diameter steering wheel rim. I installed this steering wheel in my yellow NC Miata, and the red stitching on the wheel matches nicely with the red stitching on the shift knob that came off of my wrecked 2016 ND Miata.
The windblocker that is in my yellow Miata is also from the red Miata. I’m not sure why this piece survived being thrown out with the rest of the red Miata’s interior, but I have it and now it’s in my yellow Miata. It still has the GoPro mount on it that I installed all the way back in 2011! I’m never going to put a GoPro on this car, but it’s a small reminder of my younger days.
I kept but didn’t install the aftermarket delrin shift knob. I really liked this shift knob in the red NC, and I used it so much that I polished the surface of the shift knob smooth. I may end up putting this shift knob on another stick shift car if I ever buy another stick shift car.
The new John Li Miata
I would probably be more despondent over the departure of the red Miata if I didn’t have the yellow one. Not only is the yellow Miata the color I would have picked back in 2009 if I had the opportunity to get one, I’ve built this car up to be everything the red Miata once was as a street car… and more.
For the original question posed at the beginning of the post, I think what I’ve come around to realizing is that, sadly, no one really thinks of that red Miata as my car any more simply because I haven’t been driving it. So while it’s indelibly “my car” in my head, that’s only because of the memories that I have of the car, while that connection barely registers a blip for everyone else.
I mentioned at the end of the previous post that the Mustang Mach 1 was sort of a marker of a new chapter of my life where I met Lily and dropped out of autocross. Just the fact that the most important person in my life doesn’t have the same attachment to the red Miata outside of a general “well, it would be nice to keep things around forever” vibe really made me think about what I was tying up my identity in. Lily’s been in my yellow Miata far more than she has been in the red one.
For most people, the fact that I still have a Miata is enough. I’m slowly coming around to that idea too. The romance of owning a specific car through decades of one’s life is alluring but not that practical or, ultimately, important in the grand scheme of things.
I wonder how long the yellow Miata will end up sticking around…
