This 525-Horsepower V8 Miata Will Fix Every Problem You've Ever Had With Miatas

The car I tried wasn't finished.

Not in the hot-rod-project sense, where nothing is ever finished because you're always futzing with details. It wasn't finished in the engineering sense, with the occasional weird habit. Almost all of them rooted in digital problems.

The greatest hurdle in tuning a mass-produced car is now electronic. The modern automobile is a self-adjusting, government-regulated computer, millions of lines of code watching everything from taillights to tire pressure. Hot rodding is not what it once was, in part because you now have situations where, say, a six-speed manual transmission uses a CAN bus to talk to a powertrain control module, and then to a body control module, then maybe an electrical switching module, and finally, a nanosecond later, a lightbulb glows on the back of your car. You have reverse lights, and you back up.

In the old days, that would've taken a transmission switch and a wire to the bulb. Possibly two.

The whole thing is designed to work as a system. Replace any of those modern components with something else, and various control modules freak out. Replace the engine of a 2016 Mazda MX-5 with a 525-hp Chevrolet V8, and they lose their damn minds. As does most of humanity.

"We've never had this much external interest," Keith Tanner told me. "I didn't think it would be that big of a deal."

Tanner works for Flyin' Miata, a Colorado engineering company that focuses on Mazda's ubiquitous roadster. Late last year, FM began selling turnkey V8 conversions for the current Miata. In addition to being the firm's chief test driver, Tanner works in the bubble of a single-car aftermarket. So you forgive him a few blind spots, like maybe not predicting how people would freak out when FM put a picture of a brand-new, Chevy-powered MX-5 on the Internet.

"When we released that first picture of the car on the road," Tanner told me, shaking his head in wonder, "people just went nuts." Then FM posted a video of the same car chirping its tires into fourth gear. I may have watched it at least 20 times, because I am a sucker for America.