Miata and Elan

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

Time to bury this myth. The Miata is NOT based in any respect upon the 
Lotus Elan, except possibly in the mind of the designer of the former, and 
more likely only in the minds of the marketing geeks. Anyone with the least 
discernment concerning things mechanical  who has driven both will 
immediately realize the gulf that separates the truly brilliant Elan from 
the merely clever Miata.

The Lotus Elan was a true backbone design. If you want to drive a modern 
iteration, look no further than the latest Corvette. The closest current 
production car to the Elan is the C5 Corvette. Please note that the very 
humungous Corvette weighs in at a svelte 3,000 lbs give or take  a bit. 
With that deliciously crude and powerful V8 and a tranny wound up so tight 
it really clunks on kickdown, it is just a rocketship, with tires and 
suspension, steering and brakes to match. Crude honey? Yessir, so whut.

The Miata is extremely civilized and delicate by comparison. It has a sort 
of unit body with a very clever aluminum bracing structure that ties the 
engine and tranny end of the body/firewall to the rear end. This 
substantially reduces the torsional weakness of a standard open top car, 
but is definitely no relation to Chapman's original and brilliant backbone 
design.

Open cars are a dumb idea from a handling point of view. An open top car 
really only made sense in the days of full frames with bodies grafted on 
top. The C5 Corvette Z 06 is decidedly  a closed top coupe, and pulls over 
1.0 g lateral acceleration making it King of the road cars currently 
available. Since the unibody came along the hardtop is the only way to go. 
Until someone brave enough to build a roadster based on a carbon fibre open 
topped tub comes along that is.


Cheers


Michael Smith
White 1991 164L
Original owner
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