The Mazda Miata has been around so long that it might seem that everything that could be written about it already has. If you think so, stop reading here. On the other hand, as much as the Miata has stayed the same over the years, it also has changed. And as much as it has changed over the years, it also has remained the same. At the root of it all is Miata's vaunted "oneness of horse and rider" concept it has pursued since the first of these roadsters debuted in 1989. It's a contention we find difficult to contradict, as does America, the market for which Mazda's roadster was originally developed.
Mazda did so in the first generation by pointing the air intake at the firewall, basically aiming a trumpet at the driver. It worked, at least from a sports car sound standpoint, but it required pulling in hot underhood air into the engine intake, which is bad for performance. For 2009, Mazda decided to bring in cooler ambient air for more consistent performance, ducting it from the front of the car. But that reduced the amount of the intake sounds heard by the driver. To recover that, Mazda experimented with reverberation chambers attached to the intake system and aimed that at the Miata's firewall.
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