Mazda Buyer's Guide

Mazda's auction presence is the MX-5, and the MX-5 at auction is the cheapest dependable classic motoring our records contain: seven sales from £850 to £5,500, median £2,800, for the car that outsold every roadster in history by doing what British sports cars did without the roadside portion of the experience.

The story, briefly

The 1989 MX-5 (NA generation, pop-up lamps) was an unashamed love letter to the Lotus Elan, built with Japanese production discipline. The NB followed in 1998, the NC in 2005; over a million in total. Alongside it, Mazda spent decades as the only maker to persist with the rotary engine, and the RX-7 is the collectible result: one sale in our records, at £16,875.

Which Mazda, for what money

£850 to £2,000 buys running NA and NB MX-5s with cosmetic needs; around our £2,800 median buys a tidy car with history; £5,500 bought our best. Early NAs, especially UK-supplied Eunos imports in good order, are appreciating and the gap to NB money is widening. The RX-7, in any generation, is a different market: rotary rebuilds are specialist work, and the £16,875 result assumed a documented engine.

What goes wrong

MX-5: rust in the rear sills and wheelarches, the one structural fault of the breed, and the first place to look at any viewing; mechanically the twin-cam fours and five-speed boxes are close to consumable-free. Crash damage hides under cheap paint on the cheapest cars. RX-7: apex seals and compression are the entire purchase; buy the test results, not the noise it makes cold.

Our view

A rust-checked NA MX-5 at £2,000 to £4,000 is the best value-per-smile in our entire dataset and an ideal first classic: parts everywhere, insurance minimal, and a rising floor under early cars. Weld the sills before they need it. The RX-7 rewards the committed; everyone else should admire it at the viewing and buy the MX-5.