This is cause for celebration. Ready to tackle one of the best roads across the Yorkshire Dales are three rear-wheel-drive sports cars, each with a manual gearbox, each for under – and in some cases well under – thirty thousand pounds. Heck, two of them even come with naturally aspirated engines. That’s a recipe hard to find at any price these days, and yet here we are, about to pitch the newly updated Mazda MX-5 against its two key rivals, and they’re all cars that are available for the same price as a middling Golf Estate. Moreover, our chosen Mazda roadster for this test is the RF version, the one with the metal folding targa roof panel, so along with the fully enclosed Toyota GT86 and the traditional soft-top equipped Abarth 124, we’ve got all permutations of the lightweight but mainstream sports car covered.
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