Opened up in Wakayama-shi.

NC2 // NC1

It’s that time of year again. As the Sakura Blossoms envelope Japan, some of our favourite Roadster owners from the Land of the Rising Sun are out taking great shots like this.

Lovely soft focus of the first and the most recent Roadster generations.

Mazda announces 2 MX5’s for SEMA 2011.

Mazda returns to SEMA 2011 this year with two familiar Roadsters that have had a bit of a makeover. Trainspotters will notice the orange NC is reminiscent of SEMA 2010.

It is in fact last year’s MX-5 Super20 sporting a new orange livery. It looks to us like they’ve taken the roll bar colour of last year and used it over the entire car.

The performance enhancements remain - DPTune reflashed ECU, full Racing Beat exhaust and the usual complement of damper, swaybar and brake upgrades. Nice to see they have retained the 16” RPF1s, too.

However the white NC is the big announcement for Roadster fans at SEMA. Again, this appears to be last years car, still wearing it’s tasty 17” Advan RS wheels. It has some interesting new modifications though. Firstly, we can’t help but notice that new front, with a mouth reminiscent of the stunning Shinari concept. There’s also a stretched roof reminiscent of Project G’s Bikini Top and an OEM MZR 2L engine running on BP’s isobutanol. The claim here is that this fuel can be reproduced by renewable means, but does not come with the ‘performance penalty’ of ethanol, as it carries a similar energy density to that of normal gasoline.

Mazda is referring to this MX5 as a Spyder. Naturally though, it has also drawn comparisons with Mini’s new ‘backwards cap wearing’ Cooper Coupe.

We prefer to see an approach which compares quite favourably to the track-focused work of tuners like GWR.

Shades of cool.

Expect to see more of these two NC2’s in these pages - prolific members of Japan’s Route 16 Club for NC drivers.

NC2 with factory (and aftermarket) appearance package.

Good looks.

NC1 & NC2.