Hello All. New member here and just wanted to introduce myself and a little of my car history. I'm on my 3rd Miata. My first was a Montego Blue NA I purchased in 1996. Our first child arrived and even though my car was not our primary vehicle it made sense to have something with a back seat. The '99 Honda Civic Si arrived. After a few years, I somehow convinced my wife to let me get another Miata so enter the 2001 Midnight Blue NB. After a few years, we were blessed with child number two and my time with 2-seaters was over for quite a while. The parade of vehicles with a back seat continued...2004 RX-8, 2007 Acura TL Type-S, 2010 BMW 135i Convertible, 2014 MB CLA Edition 1, 2016 MB C300 Sport. While many of these were fun in their own way, none were the MX-5. The kids are now grown with their own cars and all of the stars aligned. In the winter of 2019 Mazda announces the release of a special edition Miata to celebrate its 30th Anniversary. In February I watch the live stream from the Chicago Auto Show announcing the car and immediately jump on the preorder website as soon as it goes live. I plunk down my $500 deposit for my 6-speed soft-top and wait....

      In the meantime, I spend all my free time on Miata.net with the other 30AE nuts waiting for our cars to arrive. At the time of order we are told "early summer delivery". With some help from some Mazda insiders on the site, we get to the point of satellite tracking the actual car carriers coming from Japan. The first ship hits CA in mid-June first but due to a train derailment, there is a delay getting the cars to dealers. The next ship arrives in Jacksonville, FL and a couple of days later one pulls into Baltimore. "Spy shots" and drone videos are posted of the cars being offloaded and now it's a competition to see who gets theirs first. On July 2nd an M.net user from Florida posts their delivery photos. This is thought to be the first customer car delivered in the US though not confirmed. I get the call on July 3rd from my dealer saying the car arrived overnight. I take delivery the same day. I end up with VIN 0009 and edition badge number 48 of 3000 (worldwide) and one of 643 cars in the US. It was originally planned to only have 500 available in the US but they reallocated some due to strong demand.

     After almost two years of ownership, I have done MANY mods. Too many to list all of them but some of the highlights are a custom Guardian Designs leather/Alcantara flat top/bottom steering wheel, CravenSpeed orange tach and shift knob, Progress springs with spacers, HardDog M4 Sport Rollbar (custom powder coated body color). 

    I know this post was long but just wanted to wrap it up by saying hello once again and look forward to meeting all of you.

Steve