The 2025 Mazda Miata Is A Blast Of Common Sense In An Age Of AI And Fat EVs

AI wants to write our emails, autonomous vehicles want to drive for us, and it's clear that EV-makers see things like manual transmissions as gimmicks, not the future. Where, then, is the stick-stirring fan of all things analog meant to go, when there are back roads to zip around on a relatively tight budget?

The answer — as it has so often been — is "Miata" or, more specifically, the 2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata. Small, spritely, and resolutely cheerful, the Japanese roadster has clung to its core message of attainable two-seat fun across four generations. SUVs and trucks may be getting bigger and more aggressive in their design, but the MX-5's grinning fascia and swoopy styling promise a refreshingly low-angst alternative.

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Pricing kicks off at $29,530 for the Sport trim, rising to $33,030 and $34,830 for the Club and Grand Touring trims, respectively (all before $1,185 destination). The RF adds a nice-but-hardly-necessary convertible "fastback" roof, and several thousand dollars, to the Club and Grand Touring models.

There are so many ways in which Mazda could complicate this formula, and so many ways in which it shows admirable restraint. The fabric hood remains manually operated; the A/C controls are outsized knobs. Nobody will confuse the plastics used on the MX-5's pop-out cupholders, or its sun visors, or its air vents for the materials you'd expect in a BMW Z4 or Mercedes CLE, but they more than do the job.

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The same goes for what's under the sheet metal, where the Skyactiv-G 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine is a familiar thing. Its 181 horsepower and 151 lb-ft of torque are — even compared to some small, affordable city cars — amusingly low; its six-speed manual transmission is still standard. There's an automatic option on the Grand Touring, if you really must.

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Power still goes to the rear wheels alone, and the closest Mazda comes to drive modes is a DSC-TRACK button (on all but the base Sport trim) that holds the traction and stability control systems further at bay in the name of going sideways on the track. Aiding you, there, is the limited-slip differential that's standard on Club trim and above, which can nudge power left to right depending on traction needs.

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There is something deeply, deeply refreshing about dropping into the Miata and knowing it'll be your eagerness at the wheel, stick, and pedals which define how fast you go and how expertly you take each corner. Notably, "fast" here needn't mean license-incinerating pace. Those relatively conservative power numbers, combined with the low-slung roadster design, mean there's plenty of engagement at more everyday speeds, not to mention a genuine sense of swiftness that belies the number on the (analog, naturally) speedo.

That'd all be for naught, had Mazda skimped on what count as the Miata's essentials, but the steering, suspension, engine, and transmission are all top-notch. The little droptop isn't painfully stiff, and it doesn't try — even with the sport-tuned Bilstein dampers standard on the Club and Grand Touring trims — to stay flat above all else. There's a welcome degree of compliance that avoids crashiness from the short wheelbase, and is communicative about grip through the corners.

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Your involvement is not just invited, but always required. You can't rely on great lashings of torque, as in other sports cars, to skip the downshift: you need to stir the perfectly weighted, sublimely notchy short-throw shifter to keep the inline-four bubbling at its perkiest. The Miata would be an unexpectedly good place to learn to drive a manual in, I think, though in the process it'd probably ruin you for most other cars. Mazda has had three and a half decades to get the clutch and stick shift balance right, and it shows.

Every reasonable drawback or criticism leveled at the MX-5 in that 35-year period remains, too. Interior storage is minimal: there's no traditional glovebox, only a small, lockable cubby between the seats. At my 5'8, the Miata's cabin feels almost tailor-made for me, but taller or stockier drivers are probably going to feel the squeeze. There are EVs with bigger frunks than the Mazda's 4.59 cu-ft trunk (though it's at least a deep space, not just a wide, shallow one, which is still relatively usable).

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Then there's Mazda's infotainment, served up on an 8.8-inch display that could be brighter and which, though a touchscreen, can only be navigated via the scroll wheel in the center console while you're driving. 

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That's unless you're using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto (wired in the base Sport trim; wireless on everything above that) which — if you've dug through Mazda's settings menus to enable it — optionally can be used by touch.

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Mazda's argument is that you ought to be focusing on driving, not on fiddling with what gadgets it grudgingly includes, and I guess you could make a case that more storage would just encourage people to bring more weight. That's hardly in line with the Miata's twinkle-toed ethos. It's hard to contest the MX-5's fuel economy, either: both transmissions land at 29 mpg combined, according to the EPA, a number which is surprisingly easy to beat.

In an age where we're preemptively praising automakers for deigning to return physical switchgear to the dashboard, the MX-5's resolutely analog charms feel borderline subversive. Sure, it's fairly impractical, and pretty noisy on long highway trips, and finding yourself lost in the blindspots of vast trucks remains disconcerting. Yet, the fact that you can still buy — for a relatively affordable sum — a genuine enthusiast roadster, with a 3-year / 36,000-mile warranty, that doesn't force an entirely hair-shirt lifestyle upon you, seems miraculous.

At the same time, I can't help but worry about the Miata's future. Electrification is coming and, while I'm a fan of EVs, you can't discount hurdles like battery pack weight. The usual way automakers address that is by cranking up the power, and suddenly, you're straying far away from the MX-5's long-successful strategy of just enough grunt for its lightness.

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That's Mazda's headache, for now at least. All we need to do is put our money where our mouths are — like with the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR86 — and make clear that the MX-5 is A-OK as it is today. Were it my budget, I'd sacrifice the extra creature comforts of this Grand Touring and go for the mid-tier Miata Club trim, which for $34,215 including destination delivers more open-top smiles than it has any right to.