We live in a golden age of accessible performance—500-hp sedans, 700-hp supercars, 1000-hp hypercars. Most of which can be tamed by ordinary people, thanks to the wonders of technology. But the other side of that coin rarely gets as much attention. Smart advances have made the industry’s workaday dishware just as satisfying as the crystal stemware on the top shelf.

This story originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of Road & Track.

So we gathered three old-faithful sports cars, gems that have been around for a bit. Each is a rear-drive four-cylinder in the most potent trim available within spitting distance of $40,000. We went to the tight and coiled Streets of Willow Springs, in Rosamond, California. Rapid, unseasonable weather changes meant we were unable to time laps in a manner that gave each car a fair shake, so we threw data out the window for seat-of-the-pants feel.

There is no winner here, because no one cross-shops these cars. So we present a look at three of the best low-buck track-day answers in the business—what you get when you buy the affordable ticket.

Richard Pardon

The Original: Mazda MX-5 Miata Club



The Miata Turns 30 but has only gotten better with age.

Hang around cars long enough, and you will encounter a discussion of the Mazda Miata. That talk will probably go something like this. Person: “You know, I own a Miata. I like it.

It’s pure.”

Second Person: “I also enjoy musical theater. But don’t you want to go fast? My car has [a turbo/a V-8/pistons the size of Greenland]. Don’t be a yutz.”

Person: “But! It’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.”

Second Person: “Whatever. Lawn mowers have more motor. I’m off to perpetrate sick burnouts.” [Walks away.]

Person: [Opens phone, Googles “Miata turbo kit.” ]

Both arguments hold water, but this magazine has always felt that no Miata is too slow, at least if you consider what you get for the money: a hyperfocused modern roadster, new and with a warranty, for the price of a loaded Honda Civic. A 2345-pound, nearly unburstable track-time go-to when you don’t make Porsche money. And more steering feel than a Ferrari 812. (Yes, really.)

Richard Pardon

Not that any Miata is a Ferrari. If you have a job and are smart enough to dress yourself without installing your pants on your head, you can likely see your way to a car that starts around $27,000. And for 2019, that car is . . . more. The 2.0-liter direct-injected four under the hood of every Miata has had its valves, ports, and throttle body enlarged. The connecting rods and pistons are lighter. The crankshaft is stiffer.

Those updates help the engine make more power, with zero drop in flexibility. It’s more sprightly off the line and snappier everywhere else. The old four made 155 hp and redlined at 6800; this one spits out 181 and spins to 7500. Sixty arrives in 5.7 seconds, down from 5.8. This is quicker than the first two generations of BMW M3. Peak torque is virtually identical—an additional 3 lb-ft—but it arrives 600 rpm lower, at 4000 rpm. There’s the same busy little valvetrain whir at idle, the same midrange intake snort.

But where other cars are merely content to rev, the Miata begs for it. The engine steams past five grand and remains glassy and unfazed at seven. Its hollow little intake snarl makes the whole process seem both cartoonish and old-world serious. For more than 20 years, the Miata’s engine has simply been an adequate solution to help the whole thing work. Now it’s a standout.

Richard Pardon

The beauty is how you both care and don’t, because the chassis is still a cheeky delight. The Streets of Willow Springs is draped up the side of a rocky mountain in the high desert, equal parts lumpy and smooth. The Miata felt the most road-oriented of our group—and this with Mazda’s most track-focused model, the MX-5 Club, wearing both a Torsen limited-slip differential and the optional Brembo/BBS/Recaro package (upgraded brakes, wheels, and seats for $4470, on top of the $30,510 Club, and available only with a manual).

It had the shortest wheelbase and the softest spring and bar, and it demanded the most delicate inputs. A quick lap begged for trailed brake, slow hands, attention. Give the Mazda what it wants, you get the most brainlessly neutral midcorner and a delicate, almost giddy pivot around your hips on the brake. All as that thin wheel channels a fizzy stream of tire behavior, the lightest, most telepathic steering possible.

The vibe is balance. On one hand, it has enough breadth of grunt to paper over small mistakes. The car doesn’t seem to park itself when you scrub a little too much speed—that old-school-Miata feeling of Help I Have Sinned Microscopically with My Inputs. Yet the Mazda is still a momentum device, all economy of motion, more grip than power. Poor choices at the wheel can still snowball into a trashed lap.

Richard Pardon

If the Camaro and BRZ carry more track-bro gravitas, the Miata is just a pal. One lap in, you’re sucker punching the tires, fun little speed-robbing slides because you can. Away from the track, you do things like head to the store for a gallon of milk and accidentally end up 90 miles from home. You downshift for the hell of it, because the gearbox is that slick and happy.

This is proof that 30 grand can buy you a lot of rear-drive track car. It can buy you more speed than the Mazda or a greater sense of focus, but you won’t find anything brimming with such a sense of joy. The Miata is pure, and purity has never been more uncommon. Get one before somebody makes it illegal. —Sam Smith

Richard Pardon

The Bruiser: Chevrolet Camaro 2.0T 1LE

A four-cylinder Camaro 1LE sounds like a bad idea. It isn't.

Car enthusiasts are a fickle bunch. No, that’s too gentle. We’re higher-maintenance than an Alfa Romeo born into the Kardashian family.

We want cars to be fast but economical. Unique in design but universally beautiful. They should talk through the wheel without following imperfections in the road. One calorie-free hamburger milkshake, please.

Track cars require compromise. A car that will spend significant time at a racetrack is allowed to be stiffer, louder, and less comfortable. No one cared that the space shuttle had no stereo. A suit of armor is noisier than a bathrobe. Compromise is why the Subaru BRZ tS feels light and taut but its cabin sounds like a white-noise machine set to “Drunk Oceans Arguing.” The Miata is fun as long as you only have one friend.

Except with the Camaro 2.0 Turbo 1LE, there’s no clanging armor. The tarmac acne that the BRZ shouts about is muted. If the Subaru’s cabin echoes like a bathroom stall, the Chevy’s is a hushed movie theater.

Richard Pardon

You sit low and back, hands on the Alcantara wheel and short-throw shifter. They require high effort, but effort and accuracy is always better than the alternative. The interior looked dated four years ago. There’s also a trunk and probably a radio, but who cares because this Camaro has Chevy’s 1LE package, the best bargain since they started selling houses with the roof included.

The 1LE package has all the hardware you need to lap a track until your neck develops a bicep: Brembo brakes; an electronically controlled, clutch-type limited-slip diff; sticky Goodyears; and a track cooling package. While its 275 hp is overshadowed by minivans, the four-cylinder 1LE still gets the 455- hp Camaro SS’s chassis tuning, but tailored for the lighter engine. And GM’s Alpha platform, the excellent component set under every Cadillac ATS and CTS.

This hardware communism creates unbelievable speed. You set your direction, and everything in the atmosphere is ignored. Turbulence isn’t an option. There’s an apex to hit.



Richard Pardon

The Camaro moves around a track with cold determination. Grip is immense. The car weighs 3430 pounds—about 1.5 Miatas—but you barely notice. Its track width is four inches broader than that of the Subaru. Weight distribution is perfect. Streets has a quick chicane where the Miata felt soft. The Camaro flew through the section as if there was a magnet under the pavement. The brakes are strong and unflappable. You sense the bite immediately, but there’s plenty of feel and travel.

The Miata is all tippy fun, like a kid leaning his head out of a merry-go-round. The Chevy is serious, robotic. I don’t consider myself a serious person, but I acknowledge that serious people get things done. Trail brake, get on the gas early, and time boost for the exit. Weather may have kept us from timing laps, but the Camaro’s superior armory of grip and power would have ensured victory.

Richard Pardon

Still, the price of being a cyborg is the inability to feel—or in this case, transmit feeling. The Camaro’s steering rack is quick and nicely weighted, but there’s no real feedback. The wheel doesn’t change much when the car is understeering: There’s weight, but the line to the front tires is dead, so it just reads like an error message.

To be fair, sensation is lacking in most modern cars. It’s a byproduct of evolution. Our canine teeth shrink as our brains grow. Similarly, that turbocharged 2.0-liter is shared with almost as many Chevy products as the bow-tie badge. It’s an efficient and introverted workhorse with a sound so dull, you immediately forget it. Friends will make fun of you for not buying the V-8. Remind them that the 2.0T is $14,000 cheaper. If they call that number insignificant, they’re either too poor to buy the car or too rich to understand financial reality.



This is a track car for the pragmatist. A car you can use every day, and grow with. Most four-seat, track-ready practical cars cost more than $60,000 and come from Germany. Skip the heated seats from our tester’s 2LT package, and you can order a Turbo 1LE for $31,000. Is it as playful as the Miata or as focused as the BRZ? No. But playful people are rarely pragmatic. This is a good car, with good parts, that juveniles will make fun of long after it passes them. —Zack Klapman

Richard Pardon

The Middle Ground: Subaru BRZ tS

Boxer, sharpened.

It should be nervous. The Subaru BRZ tS is the oldest horse here and has done little to address the public’s chief complaint with the thing: horsepower.

The world just can't understand why Subaru refuses to offer the car with any of its excellent turbo four-cylinders. Aside from a few tweaks, the car we lined up here is identical to the BRZ that debuted seven years ago. Even this model, the track-focused tS, produces 205 hp, only five more than the ordinary BRZ had on its debut. Same naturally aspirated 2.0-liter flat-four, same feel, same engine drone.

Seems the gods don’t reward patience after all.

Richard Pardon

At least it isn’t slow. Nor is its powerplant a feature-less lump, like the Camaro’s turbocharged 2.0-liter. The Subaru’s engine has faults but also character. Below 4000 rpm, it feels like you’re going backward, waiting for the tach to dig out of a crater. After that, the thing opens its eyes. It drags itself to redline. You get the distinct sense that it’s on the way to something, but some-thing never comes.

The good news: Thanks to the gearbox, keeping that lump in its powerband is half the joy. The Miata may be the crowd favorite, but the BRZ’s six-speed manual feels great, with short, precise shifts that make the Camaro’s seem lazy. A good thing, as the Subaru’s short final drive and close-ratio gearset require frequent gear hopping. Its focused driveline is flummoxed by gaps—at Streets, second was too short for several corners, third too long. It meant picking one or the other, banging the rev limiter at the wrong time or falling into the torqueless hole under four grand.

But you’ve heard all that before. What gets lost in the noise of engine gripes is the rest of the car’s genuine greatness. It’s light on its feet, balanced, wickedly sharp. The tS trim replaces the base car’s tail-happy antics with grip.



Richard Pardon

New 18-inch wheels are wrapped in gooey Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires. There are less immediately apparent upgrades, like Sachs dampers and springs that are 15 percent stiffer up front, three percent stiffer in the rear. Chassis braces and a larger rear anti-roll bar keep the car planted through rapid transitions. Subaru says the changes are good for an 18 per- cent reduction in roll, which doesn’t seem like much. But drive the tS and Miata back-to-back, and the Mazda feels like it’s about to roll over and ask for a tummy rub.

We had worried that the focus on grip would cause the BRZ to lose its playful feel. But that hasn’t happened. The car will still toss out its tail, it just takes more speed. The Subaru isn’t as willing to rotate as the Miata, nor is it as bolted to the pavement as the Camaro. Instead, it’s a middle ground: dead fast and neutral when needed, an out- right hooligan when you want. Likewise, the brakes handle any ham-fisted foolishness. The tS kit adds Brembo hardware—four-piston calipers up front and two-pot units out back—and they refuse to fade.

The configuration of Streets we ran had a tight cut-through just before start/finish, providing for a suspension’s worst-case scenario. Weight shoved onto front tires, under a hard brake, as you blitz over an uneven surface. The Miata’s yards of suspension stroke soaked up everything, while the Camaro’s damping kept it planted. The BRZ fell short. It felt like a skipping stone, leaving bits of your spine in its wake. The only solution was to bleed as much speed as possible before that transition, tiptoeing over the worst of it.

Richard Pardon

Still, harsh springs are a small price to pay for the Goldilocks ground between the weaponized Camaro and the happy-go-lucky Miata. This is a deeply rewarding car. Subaru turned an old machine sharp with a handful of tricks, all of which we’d throw at the base BRZ, if we found one in our garage. Which so few people do.



The worst part of each of these cars is how hard you have to work to convince anyone to buy them. Each wears a stigma: the four-cylinder Camaro, the meager Miata, the motor-caveat BRZ.

The irony is these are some of the most entertaining sports cars available at any price. They are quietly doing the Lord’s work, offering a link to what brought us to the altar of Car. They conjure up summer nights on empty roads, a tach needle swinging wide, pushing you toward that perfect line. And they do it without an ounce of pretension. — Zach Bowman



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