Feel the thrill of Mazda.

Byline: Mandeep Singh

I remember as a child I was fascinated with toy cars and had quite a collection.

There was one battery-powered model I was particularly fond of, a hard-top convertible, with the top folding neatly into the boot with the flick of a switch!

It was an extremely neat contraption but I had never seen anything like that on the roads or in magazine pictures.

Now, years later, I see that "dream" right in front of me - the Mazda MX-5 Power Retractable Hardtop (PRHT).

This extremely small, toy-like vehicle, about a third the size of my own SUV - was mine to drive for a week and I was excited to be taking it through its paces.

Initially, I was quite apprehensive about how I would get into the vehicle with the top on, but my doubts were quickly dispelled.

It's extremely easy to literally slip in and get behind the wheel in a spacious aircraft-like cabin, with plenty of room to stretch your long legs, but with the foot pedals within easy reach.

The feeling was that of euphoria - getting ready to have a feel of the six-speed manual transmission - a rarity in Bahrain, which thrives on automatics.

I was not disappointed. The car "takes off" at high speed and could be a little difficult to manage for someone not used to a manual.

The car works on Mazda's Jinba Ittai philosophy, which literally means that "the rider and horse become one".

In Japan, Jinba Ittai is a ritual in which an archer mounted on a horse gallops past a target and shoots an arrow. To hit the target's bull's eye, the archer and horse must move as one.

A natural two-way communication is essential and the horse and rider alliance must also exhibit a high degree of synergy.

Applying this philosophy to modern-day motoring, Jinba Ittai is similar to the bond between a single-seat formula-car driver and his car, or the relationship between a high-performance sports motorcycle and its rider.

So there I was, my long legs sticking into the tiny vehicle and the hard top down (I wish I could say "my hair flowing in the wind" but that was not to be).

It was then I noticed how beautifully contoured the car is. As I looked out over the bonnet, I saw the extra-wide fenders confidently slicing through the air ahead of me.

It made me wonder how a car that seemed so delicate could have such a strong enthusiast following - with hundreds of fan clubs all over the world.

At first glance, the MX-5 still has the smiling front facade that gives the impression that it's a character from a Japanese Anime cartoon, an image helped along by a front air dam with upturned corners.

The front lights, while not exactly scowling and menacing, do have a bit of a mischievous look to them and the chrome surrounds on the fog lights.

Add to this the grille and chrome headlight surrounds and the chrome finished door handles and you have a mean driving machine, which also looks smart!

When you want an open car, this one's just as good, and when you want a closed car, this one's vastly better.

With the top buttoned up, the PRHT is as quiet, comfortable and secure as any steel-roofed coupe.

It is what I call a real convertible. A header latch, one button and about 10 seconds are all that separates the two very different configurations.

The hardtop adds about 70 pounds to the weight, which some might say is a "lump of mass" you would pay good money to remove from a true sports car. But it just doesn't create any identifiable issues.

Tossing the new MX-5 around on the road leading up to the Bahrain International Circuit (yes, that is our "test track"), there is no sense of the extra weight and, in fact, the hard top comes in quite handy to keep out the flying sand.

It is perhaps a bit tail-happy, since the four electric motors and most of the folding mechanism lie aft of the car's midpoint.

The incremental weight also did not show up while whipping the car around on our test track.

Acceleration and braking is extremely comfortable and within reasonable variation.

Aside from the top itself, touches of chrome around the grille opening, on the door handles and the headlight bezels, are all the distinction the car gets.

The top is distinctive enough and it is a real beauty. It comes across as being brilliantly engineered.

All is not perfect, however.

The PRHT features safety sensors that let the driver know when the top latch is undone or when it's not fully stowed and, on a few occasions, I had the sensors triggering alarms that would not stop, forcing me to restart the engine to silence them.

It should be noted, however, that tall drivers like myself may find themselves hunching a little to see below the roofline - the package does give drivers a height-adjustable seat, but even with it set to its lowest level my head reached up so close to the top that I realised I needed a different headgear!

I guess, however, that's one benefit of only having 940mm of top-up headroom.

Even if this is a convertible at heart, even the hard-top cannot completely eliminate wind noise and I always had that feeling you get when your window is opened just enough to break the seal between door-jam and glass, allowing air to rush in.

Seats are appropriately side-bolstered, keeping you snugly in place on even the most enthusiastic of rides and covered in what Mazda calls "saddle brown" leather.

Ditto the steering wheel, shift knob and door inserts, all held together by exposed exterior blue stitching and all serving to demonstrate Mazda's attention to detail.

One of the most exciting features is Mazda's advanced credit-card like keyless entry system and anti-theft system.

The ventilation system, meanwhile, automatically directs all vents to the occupants' feet as opposed to their faces.

Even the car's premium Bose seven-speaker sound system takes part in the action, cutting sound to the upper speakers when distorted by wind noise; all small details that when put together make for a complete convertible experience.

As should be expected for a car weighing only 1,183kg, it does not take much to hustle the MX-5 along, and the 166 horsepower made by its 2.0-litre inline-four is fairly generous.

The tactility of the steering, the reward of a snappy shift from third to fourth gear and the pure exhilaration of "wind in the hair" all went on to prove that this is a car that knows what it's meant to do - and does it pretty well.

What is sacrificed in trunk space is made up for with the sensation that you are at the helm of one of the purist sports cars still left on the market, in this age of electronic trickery and quad-zone climate control systems.

The MX-5 is available at its dealer, International Motor Trading Agency in Salmadad, at BD10,500.

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