This Mustang-Bodied Mazda Miata Is A Whole Heap Of Questions
You’ve heard of Mazda Miatas getting all sorts of engine transplants, including Mustang V8s. We wholeheartedly approve, if only for giggles. This Miata/Mustang hybrid is something totally different.
The innards and greasy bits of a 1997 Miata have been clothed in a replica Ford Mustang body, built to scale over the Miata’s wheelbase. It looks mostly like a small-scale classic Mustang… but it drives and sounds like a tiny four-cylinder Japanese sports car from the 1990s. The questions are tumbling out of our minds so fast they’re getting jammed in our frontal lobes.
Why would you do this this way? Why not swap a V8 in as well? How long did it take? Who actually built the shell? Why wouldn’t you swap the wheels to Mustang items? Could you, perhaps, have considered a better use for your money? Why do we quite like it? Should we seek medical attention? Will my church cast me out as demon spawn if I buy it?
In fairness, this build’s small scale means that, if you liked, you really could put a bigger engine in it and enjoy some three-quarter-scale ‘Murican fun, as has been pointed out on the Reddit thread dedicated to this… thing, dubbed the M1stang.
The sub-95,000-mile Miata chassis is more or less unmolested and seems in decent condition throughout, including underneath. The original Mazda soft-top is a giveaway and isn’t in the best shape after being repeatedly folded without unzipping the plastic window first.
The listing has bunches and bunches of pictures to scroll through. It has the 1.8-litre engine, which was good for about 130bhp when new. It has air-conditioning, and, err, windscreen wipers, plus the original cassette deck.
For sale through JK’s Galleria of Vintage, in north east Ohio, the price is $9800. We’re not sure how this works in the US, but the advert indicates that a sales tax could be added. That could be a generic disclaimer with no relevance here, or this Mustang-bodied Miata could get even more expensive.
What say you, CTzens? Would you buy it and love it, or would you kill it with fire?
Source: Autotrader via Reddit
Comments
When you’ve got a cut and blow dry at 6and you want to run down some pedestrians at 9
Woulda been cooler if it was a Miata with a Mustang engine swap
Aaaand I am done now.
That’s somehow great
well, someone swapped a ls1 from a pontiac firebird ws6 with a honda d16 series engine, then again the ls1 was just blown…
You could literally get a running mustang with decent paint for less.
This was a kit car featured in kit car magazine. I still have the issue, and have to admit that I found it appealing. Now that I have a miata, I would never dream of disgracing its beautiful lines, but still a pretty cool option if you’ve got a rusty donor
Maybe it will go straight
“Miata” and “straight” don’t go well together.
I’m not against people doing whatever they want with their own cars - but why go to so much trouble to create something they think is pretty cool and leave those dreadful alloys on?
First an RB26 powered Mustang and now this?