Are the new Miatas selling?

Ive seen one in the orlando area, which is surprising. I've seen more 4Cs than ND Miatas this month so far.

I stopped by a Mazda dealer over the weekend, and the GT on the lot was flirting with $40k after all of the snake oil undercoating, LoJack, and market adjustments.

I posted a similar thread when the new Mazda 3 came out. As it happened, they were having production issues that they have long since worked out.

It's kind of a silly thread. Does anyone bother trying to look up actual statistics?

http://left-lane.com/us-car-sales-data/mazda/mazda-mx-5-miata/

It's the triumph of anecdote over data!

The ND only started appearing in the US in mid-July. Just for fun, let's assume that all the NCs were gone immediately. Which means that, in four and a bit months of sales, it pretty much matched the number of NCs in 2014. October 2015 was more than three times October 2014.

DirtyBird222 wrote: Ive seen one in the orlando area, which is surprising. I've seen more 4Cs than ND Miatas this month so far.

Best ever sales month for the 4C: January 2015 with 97 units. 2015 sales are 606.
Worst sales month for the ND Miata: September 2015 with 940 units. Rough estimate of about 4500 so far.

Edit - (Incorrect interpretation of the data deleted here).

What's interesting is that since 2007, Miata sales have been sliding downward. Hopefully the ND will reverse the trend. So far, so good.

Agreed, sales are up.

Clarification.

There were as many NDs sold in four and a half months as there were NCs sold in ALL of 2014.

I'm most impressed by the fact that a fairly small car company (Mazda) can design, build and sell such an outstanding low volume platform and still (I'm guessing) make a profit. It makes all the claims from companies with far greater resources like Nissan (iDX), Honda (CRX, S660, S2000) and all the others highly suspect. More like they're really saying, we COULD build anything cool and fun to drive but we can't be bothered because large quantities of boring E36 M3 is our bread and butter.

jimbob_racing wrote: I'm most impressed by the fact that a fairly small car company (Mazda) can design, build and sell such an outstanding low volume platform and still (I'm guessing) make a profit. It makes all the claims from companies with far greater resources like Nissan (iDX), Honda (CRX, S660, S2000) and all the others highly suspect. More like they're really saying, we COULD build anything cool and fun to drive but we can't be bothered because large quantities of boring E36 M3 is our bread and butter.

Well said.

Do they make a profit? I'd be surprised. Especially when they were selling sub-10,000 units/yr. In fairness, it's an international car, but even in Europe it wasn't like NCs were selling like hotcakes, Strudel or Scones.

They had one at the dealership (an auto) when we went to look at 3s. It was sold and gone by the time we came back the next day.

I've seen a few: Four at the dealer when I took a test drive, Three at cars and coffee in Boulder. Four on the roads of Denver. Also, I saw Keith & FM's Ceramic at a High Plains Raceway track day.

Which was lucky, because that day my '92 popped a cursed water plug. He handed me a spare out of his tool box. Thank you Keith.

tuna55 wrote:

jimbob_racing wrote: I'm most impressed by the fact that a fairly small car company (Mazda) can design, build and sell such an outstanding low volume platform and still (I'm guessing) make a profit. It makes all the claims from companies with far greater resources like Nissan (iDX), Honda (CRX, S660, S2000) and all the others highly suspect. More like they're really saying, we COULD build anything cool and fun to drive but we can't be bothered because large quantities of boring E36 M3 is our bread and butter.

Well said.

But completely untrue.

I've worked my whole life in the auto industry, every vehicle line lives and dies on it's contribution to the bottom line. It's not just the cost of the component, or the cost of the tooling (which is amortized) but also the cost of the labor to design and develop as well as the cost of the infrastructure etc. If updating the S2000 had been worth it to Honda and they had the resources spare I'm sure you would still have an S2000 in the showroom. And in their eyes the CR-Z or Civic Coupe is the modern CRX. Expecting a sub 2,000 FWD economy hatch with 50hp is just plain nuts for today.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

jimbob_racing wrote: I'm most impressed by the fact that a fairly small car company (Mazda) can design, build and sell such an outstanding low volume platform and still (I'm guessing) make a profit. It makes all the claims from companies with far greater resources like Nissan (iDX), Honda (CRX, S660, S2000) and all the others highly suspect. More like they're really saying, we COULD build anything cool and fun to drive but we can't be bothered because large quantities of boring E36 M3 is our bread and butter.

Well said.

But completely untrue. I've worked my whole life in the auto industry, every vehicle line lives and dies on it's contribution to the bottom line. It's not just the cost of the component, or the cost of the tooling (which is amortized) but also the cost of the labor to design and develop as well as the cost of the infrastructure etc. If updating the S2000 had been worth it to Honda and they had the resources spare I'm sure you would still have an S2000 in the showroom. And in their eyes the CR-Z or Civic Coupe is the modern CRX. Expecting a sub 2,000 FWD economy hatch with 50hp is just plain nuts for today.

You disagreed, and then agreed.

tuna55 wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

jimbob_racing wrote: I'm most impressed by the fact that a fairly small car company (Mazda) can design, build and sell such an outstanding low volume platform and still (I'm guessing) make a profit. It makes all the claims from companies with far greater resources like Nissan (iDX), Honda (CRX, S660, S2000) and all the others highly suspect. More like they're really saying, we COULD build anything cool and fun to drive but we can't be bothered because large quantities of boring E36 M3 is our bread and butter.

Well said.

But completely untrue. I've worked my whole life in the auto industry, every vehicle line lives and dies on it's contribution to the bottom line. It's not just the cost of the component, or the cost of the tooling (which is amortized) but also the cost of the labor to design and develop as well as the cost of the infrastructure etc. If updating the S2000 had been worth it to Honda and they had the resources spare I'm sure you would still have an S2000 in the showroom. And in their eyes the CR-Z or Civic Coupe is the modern CRX. Expecting a sub 2,000 FWD economy hatch with 50hp is just plain nuts for today.

You disagreed, and then agreed.

I'm disagreeing that companies are hiding behind the claim it's not cost effective as an excuse for not building cars. I'm saying if Honda had a business case for the S2000 we'd still have it. They believe they have (had) a business case for a modern CRX so built it and called it the CR-Z.

Note. It looks like the CR-Z has fallen short of expectations and may be gone in the not too distant future, adding more weight to the argument that it's hard to make $$'s on these niche vehicles. Personally, even as a competitor (Ford Employee) I hope that's not true, I like the CR-Z. Off topic, are there many doing track days, autocross, being modded etc.?

The point being made is that it's amazing that a small company like Mazda can produce such a good car at such a good price, whereas Honda couldn't make theirs profitable enough to keep going, despite having a few multiples of engineering power.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson:

So, Honda really should have not skipped past "Y" when naming it, then...?

Mitchell wrote: I stopped by a Mazda dealer over the weekend, and the GT on the lot was flirting with $40k after all of the snake oil undercoating, LoJack, and market adjustments.

The dealer I visited was selling the base model I drove for MSRP. Some local club members picked up NDs with S plan pricing.

Volume of many individual models is down and more models are available. Sports cars seem to have been particularly hard hit, they're not as fashionable as they once were. To demonstrate, in the US the '86 RX-7 sold 56k, the '90 Miata sold 51k, '99 miata 33k, '13 FRS/BRZ 22k. (all peak first year numbers) It seems like year 2+ numbers have declined even further.

One of my friends in Nebraska, who knows nothing of cars whatsoever, just bought one with a manual transmission.

Honda blew it with the BR-Z (edit, I meant CR-Z). Gorgeous looks, good functionality, but who wants a "sporty car" that will get spanked by any number of econoboxes and SUVs? On top of that, the economy figures weren't even that good. All they would have had to do is put a decent 2.4 in there, and they'd have been styling.

I don't think that I've seen one in person yet.

Hey, I found a post from 1989!

Kreb wrote: Mazda blew it with the Miata. Gorgeous looks, good functionality, but who wants a "sporty car" that will get spanked by any number of econoboxes and SUVs? On top of that, the economy figures weren't even that good. All they would have had to do is put a decent 2.4 in there, and they'd have been styling.

OOPs I meant CR-Z. What ever happened to using actual nouns for names?

But CR-Z/Miata are apples and Oranges.

Kreb wrote: OOPs I meant CR-Z. What ever happened to using actual nouns for names? But CR-Z/Miata are apples and Oranges.

So yeah, they should have named it the CRY

I haven't seen one out in the wild yet. I thought I saw one, but it turned out to be a Jag F type roadster. (It was dark and raining and I spotted it from a front 3/4 view from across an intersection)