In the fall of 2001, Racing Beat was asked by Mazda USA to prepare a "special project" car that would be presented to Mazda President Charlie Hughes.

Upon delivery of an 2002 "Pure White" LS model Miata, Racing Beat's co-founder and chief engineer Jim Mederer set out to explore the handling limits of the car. His test sessions uncovered an oversteer characteritic to the car that he had not noticed on earlier models. Calls to Mazda engineers indicated that no substanial changes had been made to the 2001 that might be an influencing factor. Serious efforts would need to be taken to neutralize this characteristic.

Next, Jim went to the Racing Beat shelves and started pulling parts for use in this project car. First, out came the shock assemblies, which were replaced with a set of Koni adjustable shocks and Racing Beat springs. These springs were specifically desinged by Racing Beat for the 2001-02 application and lowered the car approximately 1-inch both front and rear. The modest drop and spring rate increase (28% front, 23% rear) combined with the Koni shocks offered an imediate iimprovement in handling performance.

Since the external design work and color scheme of the car was still under development by Mazda's Design Center in near by Irvine, CA, we had no idea at the time what the "look" of the car was going to be. Mazda's Jim Jordan supervised the design team and made the selection of the OZ wheels and 205/45/17 Yokohama Parada tires. Once the new wheel/tire combinaton was installed on the car, suspension tuning could begin in earnst.

After a few laps around his secrect test course, Jim was still unsatisfied with the oversteer characteristics of the car. He went to work and quickly designed a new prototype 1.25-inch front sway bar for this application. Retaining the stock rear bar, this larger front bar was installed on the car along with the RB sway bar brace kit, heavy duty endlinks, lower control arm reinforcement flanges and all-new, cast-aluminum sway bar mounting brackets. The handling on the car improved noticably.

Under the hood a Racing Beat High Flow Air Intlet Assembly was installed along with a prototype carbon fiber heat shield. ULTRA Spark Plug Wires were added to the car along with a Racing Beat lightweight aluminum flywheel. One of the most notable additions was a stanless steel, 4 into 1 prototype header. Exhaust gases were vented through a Racing Beat polished stainless steel Dual Tip Power Pulse muffler.

After installation of the perrormance parts, the car was sent off to Madzd's Design center for an external make-over. As shown here, this special Miata was outfitted with custom style bar, head light cover treatment, "air scoops" and rear wing. (These special parts are "one-off" parts made just for this car and are not available for sale.)

Once the transformation was complete, the car was presented to President Hughes who then drove the car a Miata event in Carmel.California. Later the car was seen on display in the lobby of Mazda North American Operations in Irvine, CA.

This car was later featured in an article in the March 2002 issue of Miata Magazine. Read the article. Special thanks to Alan Paradise, Miata Magazine's editor, for the use of the close-up photos.