Quote:
Originally Posted by equ
Every time I see an ND, I feel a little tug at my heart strings, even as I'm really not in to cars that much any longer. It is one of the very few cars to do so.
ZBB: Was it an easy decision hardtop vs. soft top? Does it buffet at 75mph on the highway?
|
The decision was surprisingly easy. I actually didn’t even test drive the soft top! That surprised me because I’ve always thought of a Miata as a soft top, and the hard top was sacrilege and adds weight. But I changed my mind early in the process — partly since I really like how the RF looks with the top up, and partly after watching Doug DeMuro’s review where he said it still felt like a full open top when down, even though the buttress structure stays up…. It also only adds ~100lb to the car…
As for buffeting at 75…. It’s not bad. Because the rear glass retracts with the roof, air is able to escape instead of buffeting (which would be way worse if the glass was fixed), and there is a small plastic screen that helps further reduce buffeting. I do put the side window up on the freeway though — road noise is just too much for me.
Here’s a pic I found online of the roof retracting. It’s really quite the mechanism — the buttresses lift up, then the top and rear window fold into the space used for the soft top - there is a pivot point above the rear glass and at the back of the roof. The trunk in both the RF and soft top are the same size — with no reduction in space with the top down. It’s still a small trunk, but it technically fits 2 rollaboards (stacked on each other)…
