Extended Week-End in the Vosges with an MX5

TL;DR MX5 adventures

I'm basically writing this 10 months after the fact. My Google Maps timeline and the pictures help a lot providing with the exact timing.

After putting a bit of pressure to have the oxygen sensor issue identified and solved in time for this anticipated week-end, I got the car back and cashed it on the same day. So that was that. There would be no week-end for me.

But weather promised to be too good to stay put. While my friend Fab tried to get me a Caterham (one of his, or expensive rentals), I found a peer to peer vehicle rental platform, and got a Mazda MX5 for the week-end. An older model (NB I think), with over 200 000 km on the clock. For not a lot of money (175€ for 4 days) and located right where we were planning to drive. Problem solved. 

We left Liège around 11:00 on Thursday morning and got the rental MX5 at 15:00. The beer case we brought didn't fit in the MX5 trunk, so we had to spread the bottles in shopping bags. Anyway, our host kindly let us park the Skoda Octavia in his driveway for the week-end, and off we went.

The meeting spot at "Le Markstein" was just 20 minutes away. We met the handful of enthusiasts that would drive the afternoon with us and basically drove down to Colmar for a barbecue. The MX5 wasn't quick but its chassis was genuinely great. And hey, we were having good times in a convertible, you couldn't ask for much more than that.

In the evening I was given the opportunity to test-drive the mighty Kompressor, a 1.6 Caterham 275 with, you guessed it, a supercharger. As I gave the key back rather unimpressed (it's brutal but the SV chassis and steering felt heavy), I was given the key to a stock 275 for a spin. I liked that one better but found the transmission was too noisy to my taste. Performance-wise, it felt on par with my souped-up 170.

We had a nice evening with flammekueche and booze, we had 4 Caterham and a good bunch of Lotus too.

On the next day we went for a proper drive around the mountains, but were only 3 cars : the kompressor, the 275 I tried, and the MX5. Landscapes were outstanding, we had blueberry pie (a local delicacy) for lunch and stopped for a drink or two in the afternoon. I was able to keep up with the MX5 by carrying all the speed I could muster in the corners. Most of the time it was impossible to reach the speed limits anyway, so all that was literally under the radar.

On Saturday morning, we went for a quick visit of Colmar, had some African lunch at the fair, then a drink in a bar. As weather forecast was abysmal for the next day, we didn't overstay our welcome and let our friends have the rest of the week-end for themselves. I somehow managed to pack but forget the vanity case with the toothbrushes and stuff (toilet bag is such a bad term for that).

I brought the MX5 back to its owner with a full tank a day early, and we compared how much I paid to how much he got in the end. Basically only half of the money went to him. We're talking 80€ for the 3-4 days.

Weather around Nancy (mid way) was so bad that I couldn't see anything with the heavy rain. The tyres were really passed their prime, so we looked for a cheap hotel on the way. By the time we decided on one, we were in the clear, so just soldiered on back home. 

The next heavy rain I would see with the Skoda was once again around Nancy, 2 months later, on our way to Corsica. That time with a set of 4 new tyres.