Rocketeer (NA) MX-5 | PH Private Area

Attempting to answer the question, ‘which MX-5 is best’, is a fool’s errand. There are as many opinions as there are variants, most of them valid (or at least persuasive, when reasoned with hand-waving passion), and even if we were all inclined to agree, you’d only need someone to mumble the word ‘aftermarket’ and then the whole can of worms would be spilled anew. It is a subject four decades in the making; boiling it down to a one-size-fits-all brass tack isn’t realistic. 

If you’ve spent any time on Rocketeer’s website, you’ll know that they share this sentiment. The standard MX-5, especially the first one, is lovely as it is. And even if you’re inclined to think it would benefit from a wee bit more power, the firm would be the first to concede that an entirely new engine isn’t the only (or easiest) way to go about accessing it. The original Rocketeer was conceived as a one-off, which means, of course, that it was the result of a singular vision, not a testbed for a future crowd-pleaser. 

But it did please a crowd. Stuffing large, loud engines into small cars has a tendency to do this generally, but when said small car is one of the best-selling sports cars ever made – and you’ve chosen said engine based on fun-maximising criteria – then small wonder people formed into a queue waving cash money. Even the thought of a Jaguar-perfected Duratec V6 countersunk into a flyweight NA is enough to make the day a little sunnier. 

Of course, the other nice thing about committing to Rocketeer’s chosen organ transplant is that you can spend time clucking around the car like it were a firstborn baby nursery, occasionally muttering the word ‘project’. Our hero in this case has done exactly that, buying an imported MX-5 solely as a blank canvas. Both inner and outer rear sills were professionally replaced, the underside was treated with Dinitrol and Bilt Hamber, and the suspension components were blasted, powder-coated and rebuilt with OE rubber bushes before it even darkened Rocketeer’s door. 

The engine swap itself was completed in 2019, although the introduction of the V6 – which itself requires bespoke front subframe, adaptor plate, mounts, loom and bespoke ECU – was accompanied, among other things, by Jass chassis rails, a DaveFab rear jacking bar, MeisterR ZetaCRD coilovers, refurbished calipers, EBC discs and pads, a TR Lane roll bar, a 3.6:1 LSD and a new hood. Oh and 15-inch Rota RB wheels, which look the business under the (recently resprayed) Mica Blue body. 

Clearly, it’s a labour of much love, and the outcome of an eight-year relationship. Moreover, thanks to the undeniably large number now showing on the odometer (214k), our private seller has not let his imagination run wild with the asking price: £18,450 is asked for the highly modified 1995 Eunos G-Ltd, which, purely on a pound-per-fun ratio, feels like being asked to pay a fiver for an unsupervised afternoon in the brewery sampling room. If you’ve ever been the least bit interested in a sweeter-sounding, faster-running MX-5, we’d suggest lunging at the phone immediately. But we would say that.